Quote Originally Posted by creagdhubh View Post
Agreed to a certain extent. It's nice to see young lads wearing the kilt, but they should do the unique attire honor and wear it correctly.

I know my boundaries, and in my opinion, what those lads are wearing in the photos in Edinburgh, is outside of my personal boundaries, but again, that's entirely my opinion and I am by no means attempting to tell anyone how they should wear their Highland attire. Just know this, there does exist a proper manner of wearing it.


Slainte,
You say that you are not attempting to tell anyone how to wear the kilt, but you do say that they are not wearing it correctly. That seems to me to be a contradiction. When you apply rules to the way in which a garment is to be worn and how it is not to be worn, you turn the garment into a uniform or, worse, a costume. Personally, I am not interested in wearing a uniform or a costume.

Perhaps the real problem here is simply that we are not describing the issues clearly. Are we really discussing two desperate topics -- highland dress (or Highland Dress) and the act of simply wearing the kilt?

Clearly the young men in the contested photographs are not wearing highland dress, and my sense is that they would not for a minute claim to be wearing highland dress. They are simply wearing a kilt as an item of daily wear, much in the way their pre-Victorian forbearers (assuming that most kilted young men in Edinburgh have Scottish ancestors) would have worn their kilts! It wasn't until the mid 1800's that the common rabble could even begin to afford the trappings of highland dress. Does anyone who espouses the virtues of highland dress want to suggest that the earliest kilted Scots were guilty of a fashion offense?

If there are really two issues here, then everyone is correct. Men (with apologies to the kilted female members of the forum) who wish to wear highland dress, should do so, and men who wish to simply wear the kilt, should also do so. And each group should, at the very least, be tolerant of the other. There will, of course, be some men who will want to do it both ways, but we can extend our tolerance to them, too.