Quote Originally Posted by Jock Scot View Post
The last two posts are absolutely correct , that people can wear what they like, when they like. The problem, yes alright it is my problem, is that it gives the unknowing the opportunity of gaining a false impression. "THAT WONT HAPPEN!" I hear you both say. Really?
I'll answer that neither OC Richard nor I have made such a claim. I suspect that the three of us would all agree that "history" itself is in so many ways many "stories" about how we got to where we are. Telling those stories can improve or distort accuracy, and the latter is abundant everywhere, depending only partly on the intent of the storyteller.

Relating to my FAR TOO FEW visits to the European countries where my ancestors lived, prime examples are monuments from war. I've mentioned here that my very first visit to Scotland followed by only a day several disturbing hours at one of THE most sobering "historical" monuments of the last century, the WWI Verdun War Memorial, which just SCREAMS "let's remember this horror so we never repeat it." That message, while SO vividly presented (the very earth of the rolling hillsides surrounding the monument is pockmarked by gigantic acneiform craters from year upon year of senseless two-way artillery bombardment). One of the REAL tragedies, of course, is that no matter how sobering and troubling the story, we managed to deny it less than a decade after the memorial was erected.

And, one of the things that made my first visit to Scotland troubling was that, barely 24 hours later, the Edinburgh Castle Museum, taking a MUCH longer view of CENTURIES of "history" told ME a story that I've summarized as "yeah, we know them English have almost exterminated us SO many times, but just give us one more chance with our Claymores and Dirks and Sgian dubhs against their Nukes, tanks, and missiles, and we'll SLAUGHTER 'em all." (I know that's not the REAL intended message, but that inference is hard to escape).

Then there's the crown jewel of Edinburgh tourism, the Royal Military Tattoo. Is it not curious that most of the performer groups that come together at the Castle's outdoor promenade come to Scotland from other places around the globe that were once subjugated by the English?

"Fashion" changes for a reason—more accurately, for a jumble of competing reasons. If sartorial accuracy about the kilt required faithful and never-changing reproduction of what came before, we'd all lie down on the grass next to our sheep, bunching up last night's scratchy wool protection against the elements into the ancient predecessor of pleats. On the other hand, the telling of the HISTORY of tartan and the kilt can include fascinating "stories" of its evolution (factual AND ridiculous) just in the way we wear it, because the only thing that's certain is that if we as cultures or even as a species are around 100, 50, or even 10 years from now, we won't be telling exactly the same story in exactly the same way as we do today. And, I'll wager we'll never surmount that tension between the real and the fabricated.