Your first experiance with a kilt.

[Ryan Ross]

Hah, I can't believe you posted this thread today, as I was just thinking of posting the same thing myself! Reason being:

Nine years ago yesterday, I recieved my first kilt as a graduation present from my parents- a tank in the Ross Hunting (it's seen in my avatar, though it has almost two yards less in it now than it did then). Now, I had planned on ordering a kilt with my graduation money...in fact, I was planning on ordering it any day and was SOOOOOO excited. Now my mom is fairly crafty (by which I mean a veritable super-ninja), and she presented me with a nice simple brown kilt belt, a pair of black hose, and a pair of dark green garters- to go with the kilt I planned to order, she said; she said she didn't get a sporran because she wanted me to pick that out myself. I was pumped like you wouldn't believe! Then, her and dad told me they had one more present for me. If I had woken up in the morning with my head sewn to the carpet, I wouldn't have been more surprized!

They told me to sit down before I opened it, so I did. As I removed the paper from the very large gift bag, I knew immediately what it was; I was measured by Matt a few months before, just in case, and mom had kept the measurements and learned about what tartan I wanted, in what color scheme, and how I wanted it pleated (to stripe) just from listening to me talk and plan! @#$%!!!!! It was EXACTLY what I wanted. Fit like a dream. I was on top of the friggin' world!

So now, today, I celebrate nine years from the first time I wore a kilt in public. After I graduated, in the afternoon, my family and I went out for lunch at an Italian restaurant, and I went kilted. I felt strangely at home in it, didn't even get a single comment on that first outing, I don't believe, and have been kilting up with extreme regularity ever since.

So that's my story.

[Mickey]

My dad was a cop and an uncle was a firefighter, so I had occasionally seen pipers as a kid, and I always loved bagpipe music. In my USMC graduation, a Canadien drum and pipe unit played, and I thought that was awesome. But I had never seen anyone in a kilt that wasn’t in full piping attire.

Then one weekend night, while I was in the service, sitting at a table in my usual bar I ordered another scotch (Chivas Regal, I believe I was swilling at the time) when a booming voice from behind me said “Thas naugh rail whisky lad! Gegh wit me far a rail drank”. I turned to see a giant of a man, with a huge white handlebar mustache, in full kilted dress. Turned out he was a retired regimental commander or something like that, in from Scotland for his daughter’s wedding and wanted to hit a real bar after the reception. We hung out for many hours, talking about service stuff while he schooled me in the world of single malts. I have never been able to get his image out of my head and how he struck me as one of the coolest, most impressive and confident guys I had ever met, and that I was in awe at how strikingly well he was dressed. I thought, “someday I’d love to look like that”. That was the only time I had ever saw a set of clothes that I felt put my dress blues to shame. (And let me tell you, the way all of the women that night all but collapsed in sweating heaps at his feet sure didn’t hurt the impression he made).

Years after that, my now wife occasionally mentioned that I should really get a kilt. Seeing that the nice handmade kilts were costing several hundred dollars, I could never bring myself to do it (The suit I got married in didn’t top out at $100). Plus the fact that I had absolutely no clue as to how to wear a kilt, and the very few people I saw actually wearing kilts were pretty much young clowns with green hair dressed for shock value, made me swear to never become one of “those guys”.

Then I came across this place, started learning way too much for my own good, and stumbled into a Scot/Irish store that sold kilts and all the proper accessories. That and immediate and intense pressure from the wife pushed me over the edge. Picked up a kilt, and some accessories, spent the next day all over town in it, and have been hooked ever since, and so is the rest of the family.

Now if I can just find my way into a dress jacket to a bar where a young Marine is drinking bad hootch, I will be able to pass on the favors that a big Scottish commander gave to me long ago.

[ctbuchanan]

Great topic. MANY years ago when I was a teen my older brother (11 years my senior) returned from a trip to Scotland to visit family with a tank in the Ancient Buchanan. Odd thing is my mother was born in Scotland only coming to the US after WWII but I don't ever recall much talk of kilts and tartans until he came back with that Buchanan. I was dumbstruck. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen and I couldn't learn enough about the tartan and the kilt. A few years later I got to wear it to a nearby Scottish Games and I was hooked. Now on my second kilt although with my personality I went for the brighter colors of the Modern Buchanan.