DO you have a favourite level of traditional dress?

[Jock Scot]

I guess my point is that the way I see it, "traditional" is not synonymous with "clean" , "nice", or "dressy".

"Traditional" means " the way things have been done for a long time"... and people have been both dressed nicely, and also gotten sweaty and dirty in kilts for a very long time.

EDIT:

I actually just spent about 30 minutes looking through archives of old Scottish city street scenes and farming photographs/video's from the 1940 and 1950's and 1960's and interestingly enough...not a kilt to be seen. So IN FACT, I could be wrong about that supposition that people have gotten dirty and worked hard in kilts, for a very long time. It might have been a LONG time ago, that people did that - "LONG" being outside our range of what's "traditional" here on the forum, and what's "historic".

Your edit is bang on target Alan. The only people who got to wear the kilt en masse when covered in muck and bullets, literally, were those from the Scottish infantry Regiments until 1940. And the Government were paying for the kilts! In three score years and ten, plus a tad with much of my time spent on farms and out on the hill with gamekeepers, stalkers and so on and I can only think of one farm worker who wore the kilt at work and one stalker(not local to here) who wore the kilt out on the hill, we all thought that they were completely mad! I have never been convinced that the kilt was ever worn generally for "dirty" work by Highlanders in times past. The occasional Factor, a few landowners did wear the kilt rather more often, but that was in smart form not for manual work. I think that the Victorian romantic artists have led many astray with their thinking here.

If we think about it realistically, the kilt is really not and was not, a sensible garment to wear on a fishing trawler, down the pit, in the ship yard, heavy construction work and so on. So inevitably the kilt was worn, by those that could afford one , or those by luck who obtained one somehow, for best or show and yes, that was and still is the traditional time to wear them.