X Marks changes

[NewEnglander]

Alan,

What a great topic! It makes me curious to find out how many of those who are kilted:

1) started out with "modern" kilts and switched to "traditional" kilts
2) vice versa
3) still wear the same kilt type (or same ratio of kilt types if you wear both) as they did when they started.

I don't know how to create the poll threads, but that might be a good tool here.

David

I started with a Utilikilt mocker (and it was a great way to get comfortable wearing a kilt and I still wear it at least once a week) and now I also own and wear 3 other tartan kilts, 2 casuals from USAKilts and 1 casual from B&S. Sometimes I consider getting another "modern" kilt in a khaki color, but I have to admit that I'm much more drawn to the traditional tartan (though not necessarily the traditional material and waist heights) lately.

[xman]

The question I have is, are people looking to tartan wool more than they were the contemporary kilts a few years ago or have the contemporary kilt wearers begun to disappear, the end of a fad perhaps, leaving behind only the die hard traditional wearers that were already around before?

[OC Richard]

The numbers don't lie, I suppose.

But the fact that we're even having this conversation is evidence of the sea-change which has occured in kilts over the last decade or two.

When I started wearing kilts, 35 years ago, there were no such things as utility kilts and sports kilts and casual kilts etc etc.

If you wore a kilt it was a kilt: 8 yards of 13oz or 16oz tartan wool, handsewn by a traditional kiltmaker. Nothing else existed or was even imagined.

I began attending Highland Games regularly in the mid-1970s and men were walking around in kilts.

I perfectly remember the first time I saw Utilikilts. The Utilikilt company had set up a booth at one of our Highland Games. None of us had ever seen one or heard of one.
99% of the piping community immediately dismissed them as hideous skirts having no relationship to kilts.
But the ordinary Highland Games attendees loved them from the get-go, and today, only a few years later, Utilikilts outnumber traditional kilts at all our local Highland Games.