Well said Mr Newsome.

To address the whole shock thing... I do not intentionally wear it for shock value. I am actually very conservative in my dress. I wear things for comfort. I wear clogs for my wide satsquatch feet. I wear a kilt as a sign of my culture and heritage. And it is most comfortable. I tend to dress reasonably. People around me though are typically shocked, and would be, no matter what. I don't dye my hair. I don't have tattoos. I don't have any piercings. I do have dreadlocks... And those do cause all sorts of problems. People are simply shocked by the large hairy man wearing a skirt. In their minds, that is all they can see. Now, if I had purple and green hair, and my face looked like I tripped and fell in to a tackle box, and I had sleeve tattoos, yeah, I would confess to intentionally trying to shock people by how I look and what I wear. Now, that said, when people are shocked, do I enjoy it? Well, yes, on some level. I like to catalog people's reactions and tuck them away in to my mental filing cabinet.

Mostly, I just want to be my self, to be my own man, be comfortable, and be left alone. For me, a kilt is many things, all of them relevant and important. On any given day I could easily give you a dozen reasons why I am wearing it. And on the next day, give a dozen different reasons.

A kilt is fine and dandy for fancy dress. And it looks good. A kilt and a jacket would prolly be the only "monkey suit" I'd ever wear. People seem to forget that the kilt was also the garmet of farmers and peasants. Rough men that lived off the land. Hard men. Men who did not look the least bit frilly or dare I say, foppish. These were pragmatic idealists who wore the kilt because it did the job... Should we forget this in our rush to define tradition? Should we only embrace the "pretty" aspects of tradition and sort of stuff the rest of it back into the cultural closet?

I really WANT the kilt to evolve and change... That means that it is alive. If it were to stagnate, I think it would die a slow death, like anything else that stagnates. That's why I absolutely love to peek at Ham's posts when he has pictures... Now that is a kilt in full evolution! Everything from being dressed to the nines to dressed down for just lounging about day to day wear. I actually respect Hamish a great deal for how he has cataloged this evolution in pictures. Can't say I always agree with him... And that's to be expected considering we come from different backgrounds and different sides of the pond, but I hold a great deal of respect for him because he has done something that I hold near and dear to my heart. He has taken something that I cherish... And through pictures brought it out of the closet for special occasions and made an acceptable example of daily wear.

I guess what bothers me, and I think I have finally nailed it after seeing some posts in this thread... Is that there are some folk that hold to traditions a bit to tightly and please, don't take it wrong, this is NOT personal attack directed at any single soul here, but it is a broad sweeping generalisation, but there are some folks that flaunt the traditional full blown rig and their 8 yard tanks, and look down at the others that just make do. This draws a line in the sand between the haves and the haves not. And something about that always gets my hackles up and makes me all defensive and ugly and confrontational. I seriously do not like my local St Andrews Society because of this... I have had a couple of run ins with several members of the local chapter... And they are all a bunch of elitist pricks. This is not an attack... It is a statement based on fact. And it is an entirely local thing. If more folk from the local SAS had the same kindness and decency that some of the board members here have, it would be a whole lot better.

Some of this is my own perception, so in the future I would do well to make sure that I am not mistakenly thinking somebody is looking down their nose at the haves nots while detailing the finer points of "traditional kilt wearing."

Wow, I made a long post. I just hope I said something worth saying.