Originally Posted by
DTrain
. . . Economics comes to the kilted world.
Not really; it's been here all along. Maybe awareness of it is new.
As long as there have been people, economics has been a principal consideration driving their behavior. They could not otherwise survive.
Why did the Scots choose wool for their clothing? What alternatives did they have? There were no man-made fibers until the late 19th century. The natural fibers available in the Middle Ages were wool, linen (flax), hemp, cotton and silk. Cotton and silk were both very expensive because of the high cost of producing and importing them. If you ever wear hemp you will wonder why ascetics wore hair shirts instead of hemp.
That leaves wool and linen, both domestic products in Scotland. Wool is far superior to linen in combating cold and wet. Difficult choice, eh?
The main reason we now have a flourishing trade in relatively low-cost kilts is that we now have a winning combination: low-cost fabrics that are satisfactory for this use, low-cost labor to make the kilts, industrious entrepreneurs to put a system together and maintain it, and customers willing to buy when the price, quality, and service are right. Let's hear it for free enterprise!
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"No man is genuinely happy, married, who has to drink worse whiskey than he used to drink when he was single." ---- H. L. Mencken
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