Quote Originally Posted by Riverkilt View Post
I'm not a physicist, but do know that hot air rises. When I'm kilted in cold weather I like to think that maybe some of the hot air trapped under my kilt spills out below and helps warm my knees some.
It would actually be pretty cool to see a thermal video image of someone in the cold wearing a kilt, to see how the warm air under the kilt 'spills out'. I would imagine that if you're just standing still, the warmth in there would stay mostly still. But as you walk and the pleats swing, it gets dissipated.

I know I don't exactly live in a place where it gets truly cold, but when I do wear my kilt in what passes for cold weather down here (20-30 degrees F), my knees don't bother me at all. It's my lower thighs that really get cold, up to about the halfway point between my knees and my hip joint.

As for double-socks and such, I've tried wearing sock liners under my kilt hose. The same ones I tried wearing under my thicker winter hiking socks. But my experience was less than satisfactory. Sock liners do tend to bunch up inside my shoe, even when the kilt hose are fine. And the fact that sock liners are usually made out of thin, slick material, makes them slippery inside my kilt hose. It's uncomfortable for me when walking. Plus, despite their advertised benefits, they tend to trap sweat inside the liners as if I were wearing a plastic bag around my feet. So I pretty much don't use them at all, either for hiking or for kilt-wearing.