Another daywear outfit, featuring a new kilt in Lochcarron's Niagara Tartan

[KennethSime]

I have a quirky and much-flawed book

World Tartans
Iain Zaczek
2001, Collins & Brown, London

which has a tartan that looks roughly similar called Niagara Falls which the author calls "a modern trade tartan".

The differences between the tartan they show and your kilt could be just another of numerous errors in that book. (In some cases the computer-generated illustration has errors, in other cases it's a different tartan altogether.)

I actually had to do a search through the tartan register prior to ordering this kilt, as there was no digital representation available at the time of ordering, but was up against the sale deadline (and my bedtime).

I figured it was either the Niagara Falls Tartan or the Niagara Region tartan, and for the price I'd be happy either way. According to the Register, Niagara Falls is a color variation on the Maple Leaf tartan dating form the 1964, and the Niagara Region tartan is a District tartan designed by Lochcarron in 2007. Once B&S confirmed for me that the tartan cloth came from Lochcarron, I was pretty sure it was the Niagara Region tartan.

About colours to co-ordinate with that kilt, I've seen photos of Glen wearing brown and/or tan tweed jackets which would probably look fantastic. The colour-theory behind it is that blue and orange are complimentary colours, brown being a very dull orange.

My old Pipe Major wore a lovely brilliant turquoise Anderson tartan kilt and he invariably wore blue jackets with it. He even had a bespoke Royal Blue Argyll jacket & waistcoat. It was a bit too much blue, seemed to me.

I had never thought of brown as a dull orange, but it makes a lot of sense - you get brown by mixing complementary colors, right? I have a pair of oatmeal-colored hose which I haven't worn much, but I think will pair nicely with this tartan.

About the leather straps on kilts, I've been wearing kilts for 45 years and I've got very used to the usual thickness of the leather used. I recently got a USA Kilts kilt and I don't care for the uber-thick stiff straps. It's difficult to shove the left-side one through the slot in the kilt, and difficult to shove all of them through the buckles. It makes dressing and adjusting the kilt more difficult than it ought to be. I've worked the leather to make the straps more flexible, though they're still far too thick.

I'm planning on switching them out for normal straps. I might make my own, from brown leather, just to be different.

I think the thick straps might be nice on a 16oz 8-yard, but they do seem a bit overkill on a 5-yard. It's a bit of a straw man sales technique, solving a problem where one doesn't really exist in the first place. I think brown straps would look very nice on your tweed kilt - nice and subdued.