What would you say is the best reasonably reputable priced kilt maker in the UK?

[OC Richard]

You are also making a huge mistake in thinking that Scots kilt attire was bought from catalogues, the local tailor was the first and only port of call.

I am about to venture into tricky territory here that those outwith the UK will have difficulty understanding, but it would help if you tried! It comes down to the dreadful term of “social standing” and how it worked.

Anyone who was anyone would never buy from a catalogue...one just went to one’s tailor and had one’s kilt attire made and the accessories, if needed, were acquired from the same source.

It was the only way to acquire new one’s attire without the then, not inconsiderable inconvenience of heading to a big city, which in those days required a major effort and unnecessary expense. I should add the not inconsiderable expense of new kilt attire in those days made kilt attire out of reach for many.

That's perfectly understandable. The aristocracy had their Savile Row bespoke tailors, and I would think that there would be small-shop local tailors scattered across the Highlands.

But these, unfortunately for the historian, leave little or no written trace. Historians require evidence.

There are adverts in some of the old Highland Games programmes of tailors in Inverness, Aberdeen, etc who either didn't produce catalogues, or did in such small numbers that they're very rarely seen.

The bulk of the evidence comes from the large-scale Edinburgh and Glasgow shops. Here's an advert from one of them.



These shops produced catalogues which were sent to distant places but I imagine that the bulk of their trade was walk-in customers. If true, what follows is that the situation wasn't one of people dressing out of catalogues, but people dressing out of shops which happened to also produce catalogues for prospective distant customers.

These early-to-mid 20th century big-city shops were the Amazon of their day. They stayed in business by selling things, and presumably the people who bought things wore them.

The catalogue terminology was never used, so it would not be altogether correct to use such terminology as being in general use.

To find out, let's take a look at a list of British-printed books on clothing using the term "costume" to mean "style of dress" from the bibliography of The Kilt: A Manual of Scottish National Dress (1914).

We can see the consistent use of "costume" right up till The Kilt was published.

I should mention that "costume" is the most-used term for clothing/dress in the book-titles appearing in this bibliography, with "dress" coming in 2nd and "garb" "clothing" and "fashion" only appearing once each.

The Costume of the Ancients. London, 1809

Ancient Costume of Great Britain and Ireland from the 7th to the 16th Century. London, 1814

The Costumes of the Original Inhabitants of British Islands from the Earliest Period to the 6th Century. London, 1821

The Ancient Costume of the Irish. Dublin, 1838

The Book of Costume or Annals of Fashion. London, 1846

The History of British Costume. London, 1874

Encyclopaedia of Costume. London, 1876

Notes on Civil Costume in England from the Conquest to the Regency. London, 1884

The Costume of the Clans. Edinburgh, 1892

Chats on Costume. London, 1906

British Costume. London and Edinburgh, 1910

Old English Costumes. Victoria and Albert Museum, 1913

History of Feminine Costume. (No city or date)