Assuming you select a tartan for your kilt, let's say one to represent your clan, you may find yourself faced with a variety of choices. You find that your clan has an ancient, modern, and weathered tartan, as well as a dress and hunting version. Which is proper to wear? The short answer it, they all are. Just pick the one you like. Now here's the longer answer.
The ancient, modern, and weathered tartans of your clan are not different tartans. They are the same tartan, woven in various hues. You can have any tartan in the world woven in the ancient, modern, or weathered color schemes. The modern colors are dark and bold, and are the standard. The ancient colors are more faded, and represent what a piece of old, vegetable dyed tartan would look like after years of fading. Hence the name "ancient." The weathered colors are the same idea, taken to a further extreme. What might a tartan look like after being buried in a peat bog for 200 years? This is what the weathered colors are supposed to suggest. Think of them the same as "stone washed" jeans. They are made new to look old. Many people at first choose the ancient colors because they think they are more "traditional," as if these were the colors their ancestors of old would have worn. Remember, the ancient colors represent faded cloth. A piece of new tartan, woven 200 years ago, would look more like our "modern" colors than anything else.
Dress tartans and hunting tartans are another matter. These names don't merely refer to color schemes. They actually refer to different tartan designs. The long and short of it is that hunting tartans have more green (or brown, or some other natural tone) and dress tartans have more white. That's it. The names do not reflect actual usage or restriction in wear. You can wear a hunting tartan to a formal occasion, and you can wear a dress tartan while hunting, for that matter. Dress tartans reflect an eighteenth century fashion for women's tartans to be white or cream based. But this does not mean that men cannot wear a dress tartan today, any more than they can't wear a white shirt or pants. Hunting tartans are given as an alternative if your clan tartan is predominantly red (or yellow, or some other bright color). Green clan tartans don't have hunting versions. In essence, they already are hunting tartans!
The important thing to remember if you find that your clan has six or seven tartans to choose from is that they all represent your clan. None is "wrong" or "right." The selection is entirely up to you and your preferences. Sometimes a clan that is particularly large (like MacDonald) will have various branches within that clan, and specific tartans to represent those branches. These are usually designation "of" somewhere (MacDonald of Glencoe, for example, or Campbell of Cawdor). If you are of that clan, but not necessarily from that particular branch, you might not want to wear a branch tartan. But even if you did, no one would put you in the stocks. Again, it's entirely up to you.
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