Kilt pin vs. broach

[OC Richard]

is it improper to use a brooch-style pin (like for a plaid) in place of a more normal kilt pin?

A plaid brooch would be a huge kilt pin! I've never seen anybody do that. (I'm talking traditional purpose-made plaid brooches which are 3-4 inch diameter.)

I've seen some really interesting designs...symmetrical/round rather than a more vertical orientation

As best I can tell, our modern traditional kilt pins, usually sword-based, sometimes a dirk or axe (they're usually vertically-oriented weapons) began appearing/getting popular sometime after the end of WWI. By the 1930s they were considered a basic part of a Highland outfit.

The offerings in a Forsyth catalogue, 1960 (probably by Robert Allison)



In Victorian times kilt pins weren't all that popular, and you don't see the 20th century style ones. Usually kilt pins were either an ordinary blanket pin, or were round, like a miniature cap-badge, with the clan crest on it.

Clan crest regalia was hugely popular in Victorian times, and the same crest-in-a-circle badge in different sizes would be worn as a cap-badge, plaid brooch, and kilt pin all together. The same crest, without the circlet, would appear as a sporran badge and on buckles.

Here, in MacLeay, the man on the right wearing matching crest-in-a-circle badges on bonnet, plaid, and kilt. Also the clan badge, without the circlet, appears on his sporran. (Note that neither man is wearing flashes, another thing that wasn't terribly popular in Victorian times, but became common after 1900.)



By the late 19th century the Clan Crest fad was over, only to come roaring back around 1980.

There's a current pipe band that wears clan crest cap badges on their kilts, Boghall & Bathgate.

are they typically be worn in the same place as a normal kilt pin?

There's really no standard or rule about where any type of kilt pin should be worn, other than somewhere more or less close to the fringe.

Personally, if wearing a jacket I like the kilt pin around halfway between the bottom of the jacket and the bottom of the kilt. To me it looks odd when people wear pins way down in the very bottom corner of the front apron, where, by the way, they are more likely to catch on things. (Like Boghall & Bathgate above, if I was them I'd move those badges up a few inches.)

Most Scottish Highland regiments didn't wear kilt pins, one that did was the Gordon Highlanders, who wore a plain blanket pin. As you can see they wear it higher on the kilt than you generally see kilt pins worn. (I do believe that that elderly gent has more medals than the Duke!)