Please explain...

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

WHAT MAKES A KILT A KILT?

How about: kilt: A part of modern male highland dress, a knee length 'skirt' of tartan cloth, thickly pleated at the back, probably descended from the woollen plaid worn by the highlanders from early times. This is the definition used in "The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Scotland", Lomand Books, 2004.

With the exception of the word "tartan" I think this pretty much sums up it up. The kilt is the refinement of the earlier dress of the highlanders. Like all good sartorial evolution, it became simpler not more complicated.

There are other "wrap around" garments. Sarongs for example. But they aren't kilts. There are "wrap around" garments that are based on the kilt, but because they have complicated the basic simplicity of the original kilt they have become something else.

Rather than use another car analogy, let me tell you about my dog, Oswald. Oswald's mother is a Cruft's Champion Basset Hound bitch. Oswald's sire was my Irish gun dog, a Golden Retriever. So what does that make Oswald? Well, he's got short legs and long ears, but he isn't a Basset Hound. He's got thick yelow hair like his father, but he's certainly no Golden Retreiver. What he is, is a dog. Plain and simple.

And I think that's what we're looking at here. The kilt and the "contemporary" are both garments, and that's about as far as it goes. Suppose the quasi-kilt had been invented in Indonesia and marketed as a "sport-sarong" or "utili-sarong"-- would guys still buy it? Yeah, but probably not in any significant numbers. The only reason for calling it a kilt is that that word resonates in our culture.

"Kilt" says "manliness" and puts over the image of social acceptability in a way that "sarong" or "manskirt" doesn't. Put another way the traditional kilt has, over the last 186 years, become an acceptable form of male attire. The "contemporary" or "quasi"-kilt is still very much a garment on the fringe of social acceptance and in some regards may be construed as more of a fetish* than a fashion choice.

It is probably going to take another 186 years to determine if the "contemporary" is going to be fashionable, or merely regarded as a passing fad of the late 20th century. One thing is for certain: the traditional kilt will still be around.

*(Before anyone gets a nose-bleed over the use of the word "fetish", look it up. It means an object believed to have magical powers of protection or an object of unreasonably excessive attention or reverence and that is the context in which it is used here-- no one is being insulted.)