Why don't we see more men wearing kilts?

[KenB]

Well, I have a few friends that attend Scottish Country Dancing. They are happy to wear the kilt for their get-together but have a difficulty wearing the kilt in public regularly. There is no amount of convincing that I can do to persuade them to wear the kilt outside set, scheduled small, limited community situations. So, they and their partners all say, " Don't you look nice.." But they never join me in my frequent "kilting".

Mind you, they also do not have decently fitting kilts. Usually the ultra casual cheaper kilts.

To each his own.

[jeanfor]

Well I have a few cheaper kilts for casual wear and some nice wool kilts. Now, I am very fit so the cheap kilts look good on me as well!

[thecompaqguy]

Here in London, it's mostly just pipers that you will see kilted, though I think there's a lot more out and about kilted than we think! Just a basic Twitter search for "kilt man" will yield a lot of tweets, with pictures, though more juvenile Tweets may use the term "manskirt"... annoyingly the term kilt is also slang for killed

I feel like going out kilted but the weather has been too poor lately... also fools like Kanye West have done the kilt no favour in the eyes of the youth. Saying that, its nice to stand out now and then.

[bodgerac]

[QUOTE=KenB;1168351]Well, I have a few friends that attend Scottish Country Dancing. They are happy to wear the kilt for their get-together but have a difficulty wearing the kilt in public regularly. There is no amount of convincing that I can do to persuade them to wear the kilt outside set, scheduled small, limited community situations. So, they and their partners all say, " Don't you look nice.." But they never join me in my frequent "kilting".

Mind you, they also do not have decently fitting kilts. Usually the ultra casual cheaper kilt.
To each his own.[Bodgerac]
I wear my Macdonald to Scottish dancing, and while I am in that direction, I call in at the local supermarket for biscuits and petrol. Nobody takes any notice. On the way to fly my model aircraft with fellow fliers at the local recreation ground, I was taking my kilt to the cleaners, but beforehand, decided to wear it to the ground, with blue t-shirt, sandles, no socks and black bum-bag worn at the front. Lots of smiles, and a little bit of good-natured mickey-taking. No problem; next stop the pub.

[WillowEstate]

As I said in my intro, my initial motivation for starting to wear my kilt was specifically to look different and, therefore, to be easily located. But since I retired, it's just another pleasant option, depending on what the day holds. I suppose that counts me in both the "let's keep it exclusive" and "let's promote it more generally" groups. So going off to get the week's groceries is an obvious occasion. And today I did the rounds of the car yards kilted, looking for a replacement car.

Interestingly, spontaneous discussions about the kilt seem to come from two sources, ladies who ask if I'm going somewhere special and gentlemen with some link to Scotland. Quite a lot of these brief conversations end with the ladies saying they would like to get their significant others into a kilt and the gents saying they wouldn't be brave enough or they couldn't afford a kilt. I should say, the vast majority of people just take no notice and I've only ever had one less than positive comment, from a group of lads on the Underground (subway) in London, who had clearly had too much "falling down juice"!

There is, I think, a perception that kilts are very expensive and, indeed, for a handstitched pure wool worsted kilt that is true (the local kiltmaker - yes, there is at least one here in Australia - charges from around $550 Australian for a bespoke kilt). But there are cheaper options and while members of this auguste body would spot them immediately, the vast majority of the population wouldn't, so for an introduction to kilt wearing, it needn't be an expensive experiment.

Of course, as most here will attest, once you are hooked, the cost can become somewhat more significant!

As for the "bravery", or lack of it, part, I think we can encourage others by, as Nike say, "just doing it" as a completely natural dress choice.

My words of wisdom in these random conversations don't seem to have had much effect so far, in that I've never seen another kilt wearer in Australia since we moved here four years ago, unless you count a bagpiper at Sydney harbour who seemed to be wearing a modified lady's tartan skirt. To make my earlier point, very few people noticed anything except a "kilted" piper.

[OC Richard]

Well, I have a few friends that attend Scottish Country Dancing. They are happy to wear the kilt for their get-together but have a difficulty wearing the kilt in public regularly. There is no amount of convincing that I can do to persuade them to wear the kilt outside set, scheduled small, limited community situations.

This is the exact attitude of the vast majority of pipers.

It's an odd thing, because most experienced pipers regard themselves as experts in kilt-wearing. Bands take great care when choosing band kit, and pipers in higher-level solos, and piping judges, take care and pride in putting together their "solo" kit. It's common for experienced pipers to be something of tartan fashionistas: at a competition, in the audience you'll hear little groups of pipers from bands who have already played making comments (positive or negative) about the dress of the other bands.

Yet at the same time there's an attitude amongst most serious pipers that wearing the kilt is something of an obligation, a chore, an annoyance, and these guys only wear their kit when actually performing on the pipes. Even at a Games they will show up in ordinary clothes, throw on their uniform five minutes before the band plays, and change back right after the band plays. To avoid this some bands require their members to stay in full uniform all day.

Mind you, they also do not have decently fitting kilts. Usually the ultra casual cheaper kilts.

Well how things have changed in Country Dancing! I was an avid Country Dancer in the early 1980s and I don't recall ever seeing a dancer in anything other than a traditional kilt (wool handsewn 8-yard kilt). In fact I can't remember there being "casual kilts" then... the only decisions when ordering a kilt then were "medium weight or heavy weight?" and "what tartan?" (Almost everybody got their kilts pleated to the sett then, except in the Army.)