Womens kilt

[Barb T]

Some of the ladies in the Louisville Pipe Band have also said that the men's kilt doesn't "hang" right from/over their hips (not sure what that means - ladies?). My piping instructor has had a couple of kilts custom-made with "a little extra hip room" (I don't know the details), and they do look better on her than her band-issued kilt. .

Any custom-made kilt can be made to the measurements of the person in question, and that includes women. If a woman comes in to a pipe band, and she has to choose from a band's existing kilts that were made for guys in the band, of course it won't fit very well. But if she has a custom made kilt done for her own measurements by a competent kiltmaker, the kilt will fit her waist and hips like a dream. The picture below shows an example of exactly this - the kilt on the left was made for the woman in question. If she had inherited the kilt on the right, it might have fit in the hips, but she would never have been able to move the waist buckles to make the waist fit properly:



Here's another example. This photo below shows the kilt that I made for myself when I started piping. My waist is 26 and my hips are 41, definitely not typical for a man's kilt. Despite that, the kilt fits fine without having any darts in the apron of the kilt (which is a real no-no, because the kilt will never sit properly if it has darts in the apron). All of the shaping is accomplished in the flare of the apron edge and in the taper of the pleats:



Having said that, there are kiltmakers out there who don't know how to build a kilt for a large waist-hip differential, which is typical of a woman's measurements. If you are a woman and want a well-fitting kilt made, you might ask to see pictures of kilts that the maker has done previously for women's measurements.