How my tartan taste has changed

[Alan H]

When I first started out wearing kilts I thought it would be nice to have a MacNaughton tartan kilt, but I wasn't terribly picky about the specifics. My first kilt was a Black Watch from Stillwater. My next kilt was a USA Kilts Casual model in Ramsay, blue. I then bought a Holyrood in a wool-poly blend, which I love and then the MacNaughton in polyester-viscose. Those two kilts were from Caledonian Kilts, which used to sell on ebay, but no longer.

At that point I started making my own, and things changed. I made a 7-yard knife pleat kilt in MacNicol, Red Modern, which I still wear. I won't ever get rid of it because it was my FIRST kilt that I made by hand, and that's important even though I have no connection whatsoever to the MacNicols.

I made a box pleat in the California Modern Tartan, which I wore yesterday. I made a 7 yard kilt knife-pleated to sett in the lightweight gray stuff that Fraser and Kirkbright have on their remnants web page, and have for ages it seems. That was just for practice. I'm wearing it today, right now. It's starting to show some wear, though. The material is just fine, but it's not as substantial as the heavier stuff. I have an X-Marks tartan 6-yard knife pleat, my best kilt to date. I love it.

Many many months ago I bought two gray Stewart tartan skirts off of ebay, to disassemble and make a lighter weight, but wool kilt out of. I have 6 yards of 28-inches wide Lindsay tartan leftover from the X-skirt project, and I quite like the Lindsay tartan so I will go ahead and make myself a machine-sewn kilt in it. I'll wear it and enjoy it. My last kilt was a Scottish National Tartan, a wonderful tartan to be sure, even though it's a Gold Brothers product. I mostly wear it to throw in.

So after that long introduction, I get to the meat of this post. I find myself looking at the Navy tartan, for example, and thinking "wow, that's gorgeous....and Dad was in the Navy, I could wear that to honor him"...

.....and rejecting the idea. The same goes for any number of tartans. I LOVE the Hudson Bay Company tartan. I mean, I just love the colors in that tartan. However, I have no connection to the Hudson Bay tartan. I think the Maple Leaf tartan is drop-dead gorgeous, and my paternal grandfathers family is as French-Canadian as it is possible to be, going back to the late 1600's, but.......... somehow, I can't get myself to order or make a Maple Leaf kilt.

When the Scottish National kilt wears out or gets damaged, I won't replace it. When this grey one I made from Fraser and Kirkbright wears out, I will be glad of the experience in making it but I will let it go without a pang. I know the same thing will happen with the Lindsay kilt I have yet to make and the Grey Stewart, even though I've wanted a Gray Stewart kilt from the very beginning.

What's happened is that over the years I've gotten to a place where I certainly can happily wear "any tartan", no problem (excluding the MacMauve, Hunting clan tartan and the O'Avocado Irish tartan), and I'm not about to throw out kilts that I've already got, but I just can't get excited about acquiring a kilt in "just another tartan". I have no need to acquire 60 kilts. I cannot bring myself to buy kilts to honor connections which feel....well, not insincere, but perhaps "distant" to me. I don't think I will buy more kilts in tartans which I feel are beautiful, but I cannot come up with a personal connection to.

...though I might make an exception for Holyrood!

That's whacko, it's not logical, my MacNaughton ancestor dates from the 1790's and my Hall ancestor from the 1850's, but still I just find myself wanting to have a connection that I feel, strongly before I wear a kilt in that tartan. I'm in the X-Marks clan and I feel a connection to that tartan and I wear it. I'm an active member of the MacNaughton clan, though my blood connection is thin and I feel a connection to that tartan and I wear it. I'm a Californian, and I wear that tartan and feel that connection. The tartan doesn't have to be "traditional"....certainly the California tartan does not date from the early 1800's, but there's got to be a REASON that I FEEL before I'm inclined to get a new kilt.

Mind you, this is just ME. I'm not knocking those who purchase kilts with intent to honor a brothers or fathers military service, or the City that an ancestor came from. If you like the MacDuff tartan, then by all means, wear it. It's just that I would, for myself anyway, prefer moving away from just wearing "any tartan", and towards wearing a tartan that really means something important to me. This means that I don't foresee any more Stillwater or Frugal Corner tartan kilts for me, unless I suddenly see MacNaughton on their listings! That doesn't mean I won't be buying a belt or pin from them, though.

As an aside, I am having a stinker of a time buying a bronze kilt pin, because there are many things that I look at that are very nice, but they don't MEAN something to me.

I am looking forward, though I am in no great rush... to the pleasure I will get in sitting down with eight yards of excellent MacNaughton tartan, and sewing myself up a really nice formal kilt that I feel a personal connection to. It will be a very different experience from stitching up that Lindsay kilt, whenever I get around to it.