I just did a quick Google search for Scottish Ambulance Serivce tartan, and the only web site I saw that showed it as available was kiltstore.net, for $71.60 for 16 oz weight cloth. However, this does not mean it is a stock tartan. Kiltstore.net pretty much has the whole international tartan index on their web site and if the tartan you are looking for is not one of the few hundred that are stock supported by the major Scottish woolen mills, they will have it custom run for you, just like Barb or I (or many other kiltmakers) can do. We just don't have fancy web sites which list all the tartans out by name. :-)

Notice they say about this tartan, "Custom Woven range. Made to order by our own small traditional weavers in the Scottish borders." (They also say "hand woven" which is incorrect, as they get it from the same Selkirk mill that Barb and I order custom cloth from -- it's superb cloth, but not hand woven!)

In any case, no matter how you slice it, getting a kilt made from a custom woven tartan is going to be more expensive from the get go because the cloth is more expensive. Unlike a tartan such as MacDonald or Campbell that the mill can run off a hundred meters at a time and know it will sell, in the case of a custom run tartan, they are producing just a few meters just for a single kilt order -- which as Barb points out, generates a lot of added cost.

One way to keep the cost down is to reduce the yardage. Who says that a kilt must contain 8 yards of material? I make a lot of four yard box pleated kilts in custom tartans for this very reason. For special run material, I charge $480 for the kilt (that's cloth and labor). Yes, it's more expensive than a typical four yard kilt. But it's also still less than a typical 8 yard kilt, which will easily cost you between $500 and $600. So it's a way that people can get a kilt in the custom tartan that they want, while keeping the cost within an average kilt budget.

Kilts are hand tailored, made to measure clothing. They are going to cost money, and there is just no way around that -- well, there is, and that is to mass produce the kilts and sell them off the rack, but this will severely limit your tartan choice. Look at the few tartans offered by Stillwater kilts, and compare that to the thousands of tartans available in traditional hand sewn kilts.

We are used to buying industricla made clothing in stock sizes these days, so our persepctive is skewed. Try researching what a completely hand sewn and made to measure suit will cost you, and then compare that to the cost of the kilt. It makes the cost of the kilt seem cheap!