My first Kilt article.

[Father Bill]

I hope your apparent frustration is not with me or my article, Father Bill.

Graham

Not in the least! I just have a real problem with "stupid" and the guy you replied to bought an extra lorrie-load of that!

[Pleater]

As a student of costume and maker of cloth and clothing, I sometimes wonder at the bravery of the first man to cut into a piece of woven cloth to shape it to something other than a rectangle.

All rectangular based clothing - the kilt, the English smock, the sari, the poncho, the sarong and many other garments around the world - is the basic form of clothing for the climate and society in which it was worn. Even trousers seem to have begun as a strip of fabric worn wrapped around the legs and drawn up to the waist front and back but open at the sides. Strips of leather or cords appear to have been used to secure the garments close to the body for warmth or ease of movement.

I have read the article about sinful kilts a couple of times - mostly because it is so unbelievable. I am glad that someone has made such a good answer to it.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[ABG0819]

Thank you all for you positive reviews of my article. It has been brought to my attention that there were some typos. I have contacted the editor and have made arrangements for them to be fixed. Thank you again for both the forum replies and the private messages I have received. When I first posted I hoped I wasn't going to be stepping on anyone's toes. As I said I am not a professional writer, nor am I a theologian, but I knew someone had to stand up to this guy. I was outraged not only as a kiltie, but as a Christian. I hope this was acceptable to the kilt-wearing world.

Graham

[Father Bill]

Ya done good, Son! Proud o' ye!

[Mel1721L]

As you are aware, I'm not a Christian and pagans don't have any such dogma. I don't mean to be disrespectful but didn't Jesus wear what could be described as a dress? Similar to what Arabs wear today?

[Father Bill]

It would be referred to as a tunic - at least that is, what we assume he wore, since we have no proof. We are told that it was unique, inasmuch as it was seamless and therefore pretty special.

[pbutts]

It occurs to me that I've never seen a depiction of JC wearing trousers. e,

My thoughts exactly. Obviously almost no one made it to heaven until well into the Middle Ages when breeches became more common. Conservative Christians flouting their ignorance of Greek and Hebrew are a pet peeve of mine. You handled this one well.

[Mel1721L]

It would be referred to as a tunic - at least that is, what we assume he wore, since we have no proof. We are told that it was unique, inasmuch as it was seamless and therefore pretty special.

The point is, male dress wasn't always trousers. Incidently the clerical collar derives from shamans wearing clothing back to front to confuse dark spirits, some cross dressed for the same reason.

[Father Bill]

The point is, male dress wasn't always trousers. Incidently the clerical collar derives from shamans wearing clothing back to front to confuse dark spirits, some cross dressed for the same reason.

I don't know where you got that particular piece of nonsense, but a white band of cloth tied around the neck was originally an indication that the wearer was literate back when that was a rare event. The "mandarin style" notched collar had another provenance entirely, but the combined look as a whole is maintained today only by clergy.

As an interesting side note that the words "clergy," "cleric," and "clerk" are all actually variations and derivations from the same root, a "clerk" being someone who can read and write. Since "clark" is another version of that, I suspect that it is part of the origin of clergy wearing the same tartan as clan "Clark/Clarke".

[OC Richard]

The point is, male dress wasn't always trousers.

Exactly! That Stewart guy was implying that the only doctrinally acceptable clothing is the stuff HE happens to wear!

Blue jeans and slacks as we wear today haven't been around very long, but Stewart implies that anything else is forbidden.

Men have worn togas and robes for thousands of years, and all the men in Biblical times would have done. (Or maybe Stewart imagines that all those guys wore blue jeans?)

The only bifurcated things in Judea might have been trews-like things that the Roman military copied from the Germans/Celts (but only worn in cold weather) or actual trews worn by Germanic/Celtic slaves (there's a painting of a Celtic slave wearing patterned trews in a Roman site in North Africa).

(I say "Germanic/Celtic" because the Roman writers often confused the two groups, and just which group the Romans were referring to in a particular reference is often open to debate. It gets really sticky because Deutsche is a cognate with Tuath which both mean "fellow countrymen".)

About the clerical collar, I'd assumed (not knowing anything about it) that it was simply a vestige of wearing a white shirt or neckcloth under an ordinary stand collar (what nowadays we call a Nehru collar) on a black coat.