So just how 'great' is Great?

[jason10mm]

FWIW I've seen chaps with regular kilts, nice boots, a medievalish vest of some sort and that lace up ren fair shirt and they fit in quite well. Sure, not authentic, but neither is anyone else aside perhaps from a dedicated reinactment group and possibly some of the hired talent.

I'm doing the great kilt ren fair thing as well. I got the Celtic Croft braveheart tartan great kilt, made my own rob roy sporran, and finished it off with the CC ring belt. Made some crude ghillie brouges, picked up a simple balmore in blue, and got the longest tailed shirt I could find (it does have laces in the front, but the wife prefers that look so I defer to the lady This about completes the outfit, all I have left to do is shape the balmore a bit and get a pin of some sort to hold the ends of the kilt together (decided not to do the perannular broach, though I think it is a good look and not horrendously inaccurate, especially once I hang my drinking mug and whatever dagger comes to hand off my belt . If I get sufficiently motivated I'll knock out a targe of some sort.

[Lallans]

By the most convincing accounts I've read, the original great kilt was a lengthy piece of unpleated and unsewn handspun and handwoven woven wool that was soaked in melted goose grease and then worn under the most extreme Scottish conditions, meaning amongst heather, brambles, and such drenched with dew, plus in general rain, fog, cold, mud, mixed with liberal quantities of manure from cattle and sheep and, of course, blood. People slept on the ground, out of doors and overnight in them and, if in groups, spread one out as an improvised shelter- the Great Kilt was a rough and tumble garment to end all such garments. If I wanted to wear one under authentic conditions, I would certainly choose wool since almost anything else would let you down under wet conditions, perhaps fatally, and I would also be shopping for, or rendering, goose grease... but under ren fair conditions as I imagine them (I've never been to one), surely any fabric resembling wool would do? I would of course test the fire retardancy before draping myself and then walking around amongst people who were smoking the herbs of Araby....