How do you measure up?

[MacSimoin]

I’ve recently been engaged in a (private) discussion on how to measure yourself for a kilt; I'm no expert at any of this but I'm doing my best to help out. Notice I didn’t say properly measure; I just don’t feel that’s an appropriate way to start this thread since we’re all unique and therefore we do things differently regarding kilts.

So, to expand on my other post, I thought it would be beneficial for some of the ‘newbies’ to read how others (here at Xmarks) take their own personal kilt measurements. I’m sure a lot of us own tailor tapes (cloth or plastic) and have no issues measuring ourselves, but it’s not always that simple because some of us feel the need (nothing wrong with that) to rely on a kilt maker (or someone else) to do so.

So, if you can share how you take your own kilt measurements, I think that would be a great help for those looking to do so on their own. If you have a kilt maker do it for you (or your are a kilt maker), then you can just skip this.

I’ll start:

1. Waist: Simple enough; I wrap the tape around my waist directly over the navel. The difference in the space above (and below) is negligible so over my navel works fine for ne.

2. Hips: Again, it’s simple, Simon: I wrap the tape around the widest part of my bottom (beep, beep, beep...look out, he's backing up).

3. Length: This is where I differ greatly from most kilt wearers because I wear my kilts at the bottom of my kneecap rather than at the middle or above it. How I’ve done this (in the past) is to sit down with my legs outstretched (toes up, heels on floor) and located the bottom of my kneecap (by sight and feel) and using a pen I've marked my skin. Standing up, I’ve had someone (my fiance) find a spot on my abdomen directly above my kneecap (on my ribcage) but level with my navel and recorded the measurement from there. And so, all of my kilts are a 24” drop length and they sit right where I want them to, not where convention (or anyone else) says they should.

So, how do you measure up?