Rising price of wool to drive up Kilt costs

[saxandpipes]

...

Question for the experts out there... Why is Scottish wool not suitable for kiltmaking? Is it too coarse or something? Why was it good enough a couple of hundred years ago but not today?

Sorry, not an expert, but I would say it has to do with pure numbers. We have around 40 million sheep in New Zealand. (Ok, the stats I am quoting below don't say that exactly, but they are from wikipedia, and might be out of date). Anyway, I guess that the UK alone simply wouldn't have enough wool to supply all the tartan, let alone all the other wool products it would like to export. And Tweed is great, but I think that particular wool wouldn't really sell that well to people who want to wear the particular garment directly against the skin, yes, I think it would be scratchy.

(world sheep populations in millions)

China 136.4
Australia 79.0
India 65.0
Iran 53.8
Sudan 51.1
New Zealand 34.1
Nigeria 33.9
United Kingdom 33.1

Hmmm, anyone else notice something interesting here...

[saxandpipes]

Oh, and I'm really not saying anything about the "quality" of the wool here. Of course Harris Tweed is one of the highest quality fabrics available. Just that that particular wool used is not as soft as many other wool types available... I have no idea if thats to do with the way it's processed...?