Heh, well, in the title what I meant was the idea of dress tartans seems to have failed to catch on in mainstream kilt-wearing circles (not that wearing a dress tartan means you have failed as a human being or that all dress tartans are failures). The point being that, like Rocky illustrated, dress tartans are very rarely requested.

I changed the title of the thread, though. I hope no one took offense or misunderstood it.

I do like the looks of the dress tartans you have shown so far in this thread, though! Some dress tartans look very nice. The pics posted thus far seem to show a nice blend of color with the addition of reasonable amounts of whites.

Some of the designs I've seen, though, seem to be just plain awful. The Colquhoun dress tartan just makes me scratch my head and wonder, "What were they thinking? Did they really think people would wear this?" They took a perfectly nice and traditional tartan design and ran huge white bands through it, throwing off all sense of symmetry and balance between colors. Maybe it would look better when seen in actual wool tartan, completed in a kilt. But I'd think a kilt-maker would have nightmares trying to lay out the pleats.

http://www.tartans.scotland.net/tart...an_id=1069.htm

*edited to add: Apparently the system won't let me change the thread title that displays in the forum. Sorry.