Sat 10 Feb 2007
Kilt police should stop pleating about shops
LIAM RUDDEN
HOOTS mon, the kilt police, otherwise known as the Scottish Tartans Authority, made the headlines this week when one of their number hit out at Edinburgh's High Street traders, accusing then of turning the Royal Mile into an "Eastern bazaar" full of "tartan tat".
Needless to say the shopkeepers in question weren't best amused.
The problem appears to be that, as it is a World Heritage Site, the STA believes the Royal Mile should be maintained as some sort of museum piece that, in their words, "epitomise[s] the quality ethos attached to almost everything Scottish". Whatever that might mean.
A quick flick through the city's history quickly shows that the thoroughfare from the Castle to the Palace has always been a thriving marketplace - it's just the nature of the businesses that have changed, that and the fact that the public hangings which were once the hottest ticket on the Mile are long gone.
If anything, the so-called "tartan tat" brightens the city's drab grey tenements, especially on one of the Capital's typically dreich wet winter afternoons.
The STA's biggest beef, however, seems to be with the ever-growing popularity of lightweight kilts, which led them to claim in Monday's paper that shopkeepers were misleading tourists by selling cut price acrylic kilts, for as little as £19.99.
You'll not get a "real" kilt for less than £240 apparently, and therein lies the rub. How many locals, let alone tourists on a budget, have a spare £240 to blow on a "real" kilt? So why shouldn't they take advantage of a cut-price alternative instead of forking out £50 a pop for a hire job. After all, as long as it is tartan (though not all are these days, camouflage or see-through plastic anyone?), has the pleats in the right place, and looks good with a Scotland top, boots and woolly socks, few are going to notice, let alone care that it's not the real thing.
Cost aside there's another reason for choosing a lightweight kilt, acrylic or otherwise (the Edinburgh Cashmere Store will sell you a 100 per cent woollen kilt for £30, it appears), and that's comfort.
The old playground chant may well have been, "Kiltie kiltie cold bum, never had a hot bum..." but as anyone who has worn full highland dress will tell you, there's no chance of contracting a chill on your kidneys while wearing a full-weight 16oz kilt - or anywhere else for that matter.
Having attended a friend's wedding in far flung Stornaway, at which donning the full kit and caboodle was more or less obligatory, I discovered that looking smart does not compensate for the scratchy, sweaty, sticky, experience of wearing Highland dress. Give me a lightweight kilt any day.
However, don't be misled into believing that the kilt police are driven by an altruistic desire to save our heritage. The organisation might sound like some historic body formed by the clan chiefs generations ago, but is actually a fairly new collective formed in 1996 by Scotland's leading weavers and tartan retailers ... no vested interests there then.
Really, who cares what your kilt is made of, as long as you wear it with pride.
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