Ok just got my first USA semi trad (and yes I did say first, to be noted in conjunction with below), in the US Army tartan. Here is my review.

First the technical specs (with comparisons):

The apron is the least tapered of my tartans at 19” at the top and 22” at the bottom (tank 20/23.5, 5 yd casual 18/ 24", SWK 17/21)

Sett of 4.25” (tank 4.5”, casual 7”, SWK 3.5”)

Pleats 24 depth 1 3/8” (tank 22 - 5.5”, casual 22 - 3/12”, SWK 36 - 2”)

Straps are rock solid, and compare with the casual, are not as good as my tank and so much better than my SWK that I can’t even begin to express that.

Lining - there is none and all the others have something, on the other hand with the PV I don’t think it is necessary.

It does have a reverse pleat on the right side as do the tank and SWK.

The good:

Workmanship is fantastic, all the pleats are perfectly lined up and tapered well. Stitching is visible, but perfectly even, and only noticeable very close (like 3” away). Fits perfectly (that extra ˝” I added on Monday helped).

The bad:

The only ding I have for Rocky is that the pieces of tartan used to hold the buckle don’t match the tartan underneath. Frankly the top two are under a belt so can’t be seen. However the lower right buckle would have matched if you had just turned the piece upside down. Again not a big deal, someone would have had to be paying way too close attention to my hips to catch it.

OK, not Rocky’s fault, but the selvedge sucks. It looks like the kilt was hemmed inside out. It looks better on the inside (still not great), but since tartan has an inside and an outside, the fabric maker seems to have done it backward. Other than that the fabric is perfect (I was a little afraid that it was going to be in brighter colors like Sport Kilts’ Army version), though a little lighter than expected.

The questionable:

The pleats are really shallow. Now some of this is my fault, I decided that if they were going to be shallow anyway I’d go ahead and get it to stripe like I wanted. Pleated to sett only would have added about ˝”. However, once I did the math, I figured out that if about 1 yard more of tartan were used, I could have had appx 20 pleats in the 4” range, with there being 2 repeats concealed in the pleat instead of 1. This option did not occur to me until it was too late, but I would have paid for it (and for the record the length used in my kilt was 4 yards 19 inches).


All things considered, I’m seriously considering another USAK (solid saffron), but I have issues with the selvedge. All in all though, the workmanship; is excellent.

Adam