Tailor or seamstress to alter a Saxon coat to kilt coat

[Doc MacBean]

I am looking for tailor or seamstress who can cut a Saxon sport coat to a kilt coat? Any recommendations? I live in south western Ohio. Appreciate your help.

[Liam]

My advice is not to alter a saxon jacket. I have yet to see one that doesn't look odd. The lapels are too long, the pockets have to be moved, the rear vent(s) are too short. I would recommend watching ebay and other sources for a used jacket.
Just my advice....

[Jock Scot]

My advice is not to alter a saxon jacket. I have yet to see one that doesn't look odd. The lapels are too long, the pockets have to be moved, the rear vent(s) are too short. I would recommend watching ebay and other sources for a used jacket.
Just my advice....

Sage advice here. In my youth the properly cut kilt jacket was way beyond the means of many and the “Saxon cut” sports jacket was quite a normal sight with the kilt for the special occasion. I have to confess it did look a tad strange , but it worked and to my eye looked far nicer than a converted sports jacket, which to my mind just does not work and for the very reasons that Liam mentions above.

[OC Richard]

Jock Scot and Liam are bang-on.

Though it is possible to do a good-looking conversion it's something very rarely seen.

First, you have to have a firm grounding in what traditional kilt jackets look like.

Second, you have to start out with a Saxon jacket that has certain features.

Here are kilt jackets by several Scottish makers

Thomas Gordon
Andrew Douglas
Cooper & MacKenzie
House of Edgar
Geoffrey Tailor

and you can see that there are certain proportions that they generally have.

It's common for people, out of not knowing, to button the bottom button of a two-button jacket which throws off how the jacket hangs (bottom row, centre). See the jacket top row, left, to see how such jackets are supposed to hang.



Now that your "eye" is accustomed to seeing traditional kilt jackets, take a look at a couple Saxon conversions.

Both have made the bottoms too short; notice that normally with kilt jackets the bottom is just slightly shorter than the sleeves.

Making the bottom too short combined with the lower button-stance of Saxon jackets means that there's not much room to do the cutaway, which ends up being too sudden and drastic.

Note also that the lower pockets on Saxon jackets are generally too low and too far forward.

[OC Richard]

Here's a side-by-side comparison to make these points more clear:



How to avoid these pitfalls?

Firstly, the best possible thing is to hand the tailor a properly-made kilt jacket to follow. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but in this case having the real thing in hand is worth a thousand pictures.

Second, a really proper job can't be done unless a Saxon jacket is acquired with certain features.

It's possible to find Saxon jackets with the lower pockets both higher and further back, where kilt jackets have them.

Another approach is to find a Saxon jacket with lower patch pockets which can be cleanly removed. These will provide plenty of fabric from which to make a pair of Highland-style pocket flaps which can be attached in the proper places. These can be mere dummy pockets, or if you're willing to put in more work you can put in working pockets.

BTW it was common for Victorian tweed kilt jackets to have patch pockets, so it might be a matter of downsizing and relocating the original patch pockets if you want to recreate that look.

Now we come to the issue of button stance, that is, where the jacket buttons and the length of the lapels. Saxon jackets can be found that button higher (3-button or 4-button styles) and these can readily be converted into the recently-popular style of kilt jacket that has a straight 3-button or 4-button front.

And it's possible to change the lapel length of ordinary Saxon jackets simply by pressing them and adding a new buttonhole in the new, higher, spot.

The main problem now is doing the cutaway, the rounded sweep of the lower front to accomodate the sporran.

There's generally a lower buttonhole that's right where you want the cutaway to happen! The odd-looking conversions above have avoided this buttonhole by doing a drastic sudden cutaway. As we have seen, proper kilt jackets have an elegant sweeping cutaway.
I've seen conversions where this unnecessary buttonhole has been sewn shut, and sometimes it's done so neatly that you only see that ex-buttonhole if you look for it. (Which I do )

About the vents, kilt jackets generally have two side-vents and Saxon jackets generally have a single central vent. The easiest solution is to get rid of the vent by sewing it up during the process of shortening the jacket.

BTW conversions generally employ "slash" cuffs due to them taking far less fabric than "gauntlet" cuffs. There should be plenty of fabric from the shortening of the jacket bottom to make a fine pair of slash cuffs, and a pair of epaulettes.

I should mention that I have first-hand experience with doing a conversion, because my first kilt jacket was a brown tweed one I converted from a charity-shop $5 Saxon sportcoat. It had the patch pockets I mentioned. Somehow I had enough fabric to make a convincing pair of gauntlet cuffs. This would have been around 1976. I had two kilts at the time, both made by my grandmother (who had never seen a kilt) and I wanted a jacket to complete my outfit.

I don't have a single photo of that jacket! But I have a photo of another conversion I did around the same time, a military-style doublet made from a charity shop Saxon suit in heavy dark blue wool. I needed the suit's trousers to get the fabric required for all the flaps as well as the cuffs, epaulets, and shells. The kilt was made by my grandmother, and I made the plaid. (I was in the process of making a feather bonnet when I won an art contest and spent the prize money on a real Scottish-made one.)

[kilted2000]

Sage advice here. In my youth the properly cut kilt jacket was way beyond the means of many and the “Saxon cut” sports jacket was quite a normal sight with the kilt for the special occasion. I have to confess it did look a tad strange , but it worked and to my eye looked far nicer than a converted sports jacket, which to my mind just does not work and for the very reasons that Liam mentions above.

So in your opinion, is a Saxon jacket better than a converted jacket? Obviously a real kilt jacket is the ideal.

[Father Bill]

To be honest, in the absence of a proper kilt jacket (tweeds are most applicable, but that's another mouse in another hole) I'd opt for no jacket, or a jumper (pullover) type sweater. Better to keep away from the more formal ones since there are fewer occasions to wear them.

[Doc MacBean]

Here's a side-by-side comparison to make these points more clear:



How to avoid these pitfalls?

Firstly, the best possible thing is to hand the tailor a properly-made kilt jacket to follow. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but in this case having the real thing in hand is worth a thousand pictures.

Second, a really proper job can't be done unless a Saxon jacket is acquired with certain features.

It's possible to find Saxon jackets with the lower pockets both higher and further back, where kilt jackets have them.

Another approach is to find a Saxon jacket with lower patch pockets which can be cleanly removed. These will provide plenty of fabric from which to make a pair of Highland-style pocket flaps which can be attached in the proper places. These can be mere dummy pockets, or if you're willing to put in more work you can put in working pockets.

BTW it was common for Victorian tweed kilt jackets to have patch pockets, so it might be a matter of downsizing and relocating the original patch pockets if you want to recreate that look.

Now we come to the issue of button stance, that is, where the jacket buttons and the length of the lapels. Saxon jackets can be found that button higher (3-button or 4-button styles) and these can readily be converted into the recently-popular style of kilt jacket that has a straight 3-button or 4-button front.

And it's possible to change the lapel length of ordinary Saxon jackets simply by pressing them and adding a new buttonhole in the new, higher, spot.

The main problem now is doing the cutaway, the rounded sweep of the lower front to accomodate the sporran.

There's generally a lower buttonhole that's right where you want the cutaway to happen! The odd-looking conversions above have avoided this buttonhole by doing a drastic sudden cutaway. As we have seen, proper kilt jackets have an elegant sweeping cutaway.
I've seen conversions where this unnecessary buttonhole has been sewn shut, and sometimes it's done so neatly that you only see that ex-buttonhole if you look for it. (Which I do )

About the vents, kilt jackets generally have two side-vents and Saxon jackets generally have a single central vent. The easiest solution is to get rid of the vent by sewing it up during the process of shortening the jacket.

BTW conversions generally employ "slash" cuffs due to them taking far less fabric than "gauntlet" cuffs. There should be plenty of fabric from the shortening of the jacket bottom to make a fine pair of slash cuffs, and a pair of epaulettes.

I should mention that I have first-hand experience with doing a conversion, because my first kilt jacket was a brown tweed one I converted from a charity-shop $5 Saxon sportcoat. It had the patch pockets I mentioned. Somehow I had enough fabric to make a convincing pair of gauntlet cuffs. This would have been around 1976. I had two kilts at the time, both made by my grandmother (who had never seen a kilt) and I wanted a jacket to complete my outfit.

I don't have a single photo of that jacket! But I have a photo of another conversion I did around the same time, a military-style doublet made from a charity shop Saxon suit in heavy dark blue wool. I needed the suit's trousers to get the fabric required for all the flaps as well as the cuffs, epaulets, and shells. The kilt was made by my grandmother, and I made the plaid. (I was in the process of making a feather bonnet when I won an art contest and spent the prize money on a real Scottish-made one.)

Thanks!!! This is so helpful and thorough! My first Kilt jacket was a Saxon coat conversion done nearly 20 years ago by a friend who was prof of fashion design. She was guided by the instructions in J. Charles Thompson's So You're Going to Wear the Kilt 3rd ed. At Grandfather Mountain I met a fellow who was wearing a linen coat and vest that had been converted. It seemed like a wonderful idea to have such a coat to wear during the hot days at summer games. Again thanks for the effort you put into this and the thoroughness with which it was done.

[Jock Scot]

So in your opinion, is a Saxon jacket better than a converted jacket? Obviously a real kilt jacket is the ideal.

In my youth I think people could get away with wearing a Saxon cut jacket and they succeeded because people accepted it as a financial necessity and of course, wartime rationing.These days I don’t think even in the Highlands of Scotland you could get away with it now. Expectations, fashions, knowledge and financial climate would not accept it now. So no, even a cut down and converted Saxon jacket would raise rather more than an eyebrow these days as expectations are very different.

[kilted2000]

I honestly don't think jacket conversions are that bad. If you live in a climate where temperatures of 95F/35C are common then a converted lightweight jacket is really the only option. Also, if you want a kilt jacket but either you can't afford a new kilt jacket or ebay rarely if ever has your size, then a converted jacket might be an acceptible option. No, you don't need a jacket to wear a kilt, but sometimes you need or just want to. You can usually tell if a jacket was converted or not, but so what? If you can find a tailor who can do the work well enough, or if you do it yourself, and if you don't mind the pockets being low, why not? Is it ideal? No, if you can afford a new kilt jacket or can get one from eBay, then do that, but if you cannot a conversion, to me, is an acceptible option. Just my opinion.