Glasgow kilt shops August 2024

[OC Richard]

I always had great dealings with Houstons in Paisley. You could have a look at their website and if anything appeals you could get there quite easily by train or bus

Yes I was going to try to get out there if I had time.

With the band I only have two "off days" yesterday spent in Edinburgh and today will be at Vindolanda.

But hopefully rehearsal will end early enough Wednesday or Thursday for me to get out to Paisley before Houstons closes.

[OC Richard]

The end of the visit-kilt-shops tale was Thursday when myself and a couple band-mates took the train to Kilmarnock to visit the McCallum bagpipe factory.

(And it's not a workshop, it's a proper factory, with rows of CNC machines and a couple robots helping the numerous craftsmen and technicians turn out, it's said, around 50 sets of pipes a week, more than some one-man pipe makers do in a year.)

We were given a fascinating and thorough tour of the factory, and ended up in the McCallum showroom which incorporates Ayrshire Kilt Shop.

There were racks of the same House of Edgar and Gaelic Themes kilt jackets with the same 400-pound prices.

But my eye was drawn to a small rack of odd jackets, and in examining these I found an Argyll in my size made in a lovely heavy dark grey tweed with loads of texture and character, so different from the off-the-peg "Arrochar" charcoal tweeds I'd seen in all the other shops.

It fit perfectly, and when I asked the price I was amazed to hear "70 pounds". I bought it immediately, and wore it all day at the Worlds on Saturday.

The only proper labels were ones stating "Made in Britain" and "48R".

Oddly, the care instructions label was hand-written on a sewn-in plain white satin tag.

And there was a sewn-in paper tag stating "McCallum J. McGregor" which suggests that a Mr McGregor never picked up his lovely jacket.

[OC Richard]

Here's the heavy tweed Argyll I purchased at the McCallum Bagpipes factory in Kilmarnock, with a waistcoat I already had.

[JPS]

Here's the heavy tweed Argyll I purchased at the McCallum Bagpipes factory in Kilmarnock, with a waistcoat I already had.

You could not convince me these weren't made as a set.

[OC Richard]

You could not convince me these weren't made as a set.

In person the tweeds are ever so slightly different, which didn't show up in the photo.

The buttons were another matter!

The waistcoat buttons were the same kind of imitation horn buttons, but oddly dull.

When faced with clothing problems I either sew my way out, or paint my way out.

Paint it was! I took off the waistcoat buttons and did a two-step paint job, first a rich deep brown then drybrush over with a lighter brown, reverse engineering how the jacket's buttons are painted. (Yes I think they're painted too.)

Top left: comparison of the jacket's buttons and a couple of the removed waistcoat buttons.

Top right: five of the waistcoat buttons have received their initial coat of shinier dark brown paint.

Bottom left: time to drybrush the lighter brown on the raised portions.



A closeup. You can see here that the waistcoat tweed has a bit less texture, and the colour is very slightly different.

I think the buttons came out nicely, an almost perfect match to the jacket's buttons.

[OC Richard]

I forgot to add a photo of the new jacket & waistcoat combination being worn.

I bought the hose in one of the Glasgow shops I visited, they're Cheviot "Hebridean".

[Jock Scot]

Dual post, sorry. Post deleted.

[Jock Scot]

Just a thought, not a criticism, might those very nice hose look a tad better if the hose tops did not extend down the leg as far? Could a slightly different way of folding the surplus length of hose top with a smart extra fold in the hose top, be a smarter option instead? To my mind that would look a lot smarter and is a very traditional way of folding hose tops that are too long.Those with patterned hose tops need to be a tad creative with their folds to see the pattern to best effect and in my experience, it is not always possible.