Soon to get my first ever Kilt, suggestions on how to mix up the looks?

[OC Richard]

I was surprised how much I enjoyed the red tie with the (Isle of Skye) tartan.

yes yes YES! Come to the dark side!

Not only do I like claret hose with IOS, I also like wearing a scarlet tie at the same time... just the reverse of the way I thought about things back in the 1980s when I wanted everything to match.

Here's a thread about me going from matchy-matchy to the idea of co-ordination and juxtaposition... my evolution only took around 30 years!

http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...0-years-77108/

One of the things that's struck my eye over and over is how the beauty of a tartan can be diminished by wearing hose and/or jacket of a colour the same as one of the main ground-colours of the kilt. This tends to suck the given colour right out of the tartan. On the other hand wearing a colour that's shifted from one of the kilt's main ground-colours, especially if more saturated, can amplify that colour in the kilt and make the tartan 'zing' even more.

With IOS, claret functions as a more saturated version of the tartan's brown, strong royal blue functions as a more saturated (or at least shifted) version of the tartan's purple. Anyhow I think that's the optical thing going on.

The other extreme, perhaps, is wearing mid-grey hose with certain tartans, the grey functioning as a far less saturated version of one or more of the tartan's colours, dulling, muting, and washing out the tartan.