Why don't people wear their kilts more?

[Karl R]

In Houston, one does not regularly see people wearing kilts.

On Saturday, I took my wife to a dinner theatre show. Since the dress code was listed as "semi-formal / formal," I wore my wool kilt, black Barathea Argyll jacket, waistcoat, necktie (with a St. Andrew's knot, of course), etc.

The venue was fairly small. According to the seating chart, it seats about 125. My wife and I ended up sharing a table with a couple of strangers. When the gentleman saw my kilt he said, "Damn it! I should have worn my kilt." On our way out after the performance, another gentleman mentioned that he had a kilt.

Based on that (admittedly non-representative) sample of the population, there should be almost 5% of the Houston population who owns a kilt. However, I almost never see men wearing kilts.

The previous time I wore my kilt out (where there were 100-150 attendees) another person mentioned that he owned a Utilikilt. (It wasn't the kind of event that you'd wear a Utilikilt to, so he had an obvious excuse for not wearing his.)

I think the average person can easily spend a year in Houston without seeing anyone wearing a kilt. Clearly, the number of people who own kilts is noticeably higher. It kind of makes me wonder why people don't wear their kilts more often around here.


As people have previously mentioned on this forum, Houston is a surprisingly kilt-friendly city. It's multi-cultural and cosmopolitan. Despite the lack of people wearing kilts, people barely blink when I wear mine.