Kilt/Tartan Help

[usonian]

This topic has been a dead horse for quite some time now on this forum. The horse is an early, now extinct species. What we are beating here yet again is no more than fossilized bones reduced to dust.

Big, huge, enormous ***.

It pretty much comes down to this:

• Until such time as the sale of all tartan is governed by a single central authority who will only mete it out after irrefutable genetic or genealogical proof that you belong to a particular clan, you can purchase and wear whatever tartan you please.
• Traditionally, however, one would wear a tartan with which they have a family connection, or absent a family connection then they would wear a "universal" tartan.
• Some people will heartily encourage you to wear whatever tartan you like for whatever reason you like.
• Some people will take offense (ranging from mild indignation to outright castigation) if they learn you're wearing another family's tartan with no affiliation.
• Most people won't even notice or ask about your tartan - or if they do it's small talk and they'll drop the subject once you tell them.
• If you're fine with all that, then go for it.
• If you're not fine with it, stick with your family tartan (or a universal one if you don't have a Scottish connection.)

There is no single, simple, universally agreed-upon answer to the question; it can be (and has been) asked 1000 times on this forum and will never result in consensus, so it's ultimately going to be up to the individual kilt wearer.

When I set out to make my first 8 yard wool kilt, I purchased my tartan from Marton Mills because I was on a budget, and their 16oz wool is quite affordable when compared to Lochcarron or D.C. Dalgliesh. They don't weave my family tartan. (Well, technically I could have gone with Black Watch, which Clan Munro wears as their hunting tartan, but I'll admit that I wanted something a little more exotic.) I chose the Murray of Atholl tartan... while I don't have any known family connections to the Murray Clan, I am a member of the Masonic lodge in Athol, Massachusetts. The town and my lodge in particular have a long-standing relationship with Blair Atholl Scotland and the Dukes of Atholl, and I thought it would be nice to have a kilt commemorating all of that.

I have had plenty of people ask me what tartan I'm wearing. I'm always prepared to launch into the above explanation if I were questioned about my affiliation with the Murrays, but it has never once gone further than "What tartan is that?" "Murray of Atholl." "Oh!" - in other words, outside of a kilt-obsessed forum like this, or a context like a highland games, people are just making small-talk.