those stupid 5 yard kilts and their shallow pleats: WRONG

[Alan H]

There's a perception that 5-yard kilts have shallower pleats than 8-9 yard kilts. Deeper pleats are always good, right?

Let's try again.

Piper George has a wonderful Ancient MacKay kilt with a ten inch sett. That's right, a ten inch sett. Since he's a piper and wanted the kilt pleated to stripe, and he wanted lots of pleats, he has over TEN YARDS of material in that kilt. why so much? ...The answer is because the sett is so freaking huge.

George is a stout lad, I'd guess that his hip measurement is about 50. If half of that is pleats, and half is aprons, that's 25 inches in pleats. There are 31 pleats in George's kilt, so each pleat reveal is 25 divided by 31 inches, or a little more than 3/4 of an inch of reveal per pleat.

Since the sett is so HUGE, wow, those pleats are really deep, almost 5 inches deep so that must be a really good kilt, right? I mean 'deep pleats" is synonymous with "good kilt" RIGHT, RIGHT? And it has over TEN YARDS of 16 ounce tartan in it, wow what a TANK! At $70 a yard, double width, this kilt has over $350 worth of cloth in it. SWEET! It cost a lot, too, so that also must mean that it's really GOOD, right?

I mean, assuming 1 yard of tartan for the under apron and kick pleat, and one yard for the over apron and first pleat (total of two yards) then how many yards of tartan are in all those pleats? 31 pleats X ten inches per pleat is 310 inches, or over eight and a half yards of tartan just in the pleats and ten and a half yards on the overall kilt.

Now, THAT is a kilt! Now that's a real He-Man kilt, right? RIGHT? It's SO much more totally fantastic and traditional and everything that some icky-stupid kilt with only 3 inch deep pleats! Right?

Answer: not necessarily.

Let's take Georges kilt, again. We'll make him a new one, eh? It'll be of the finest 20 ounce tartan, hand-woven by Mrs. Edith MacSchnozzle, who lives in a stone hut alongside the river Spey and has whisky for breakfast every morning of her 90-plus years AND is personally acquainted with the chieftan of the MacKay clan. The kilt is sewn up by Dame Barbara Twigglesbury, graduate of the MacSchnozzle school of kiltmaking, with 60 years of experience. Mrs. Twigglesury served a 30 year apprenticeship at Boyds of Edinburgh before they let her make her first kilt for actual retail sale.. It's lined with hand-woven silk and all the leather bits on the kilt are recovered from the wreckage of a 16th century galleon, stored in a nitrogen-filled warehouse in Bristol. All the metal parts are silver, the excess of what was used to cast the America cup trophy..

...........you get my drift? There's just one little difference between Georges first kilt and Georges second kilt. On the second kilt, the sett is 6 inches.

How much tartan is there, and how deep are the pleats on Georges second kilt?

Let's say he still has 31 pleats around that rumpus of his, so each pleat reveal is a little more than 3/4th of an inch. It's pleated to stripe, since he's a Piper. How much tartan in the pleats?

31 pleats X 6 inches per pleat = 186 inches, or 5.2 yards

Add in a yard for the over-apron and first pleat, add in another yard for the under-apron and kick pleat and you have a 7.2 yard kilt.

.........which of course is a total piece of garbage, that no self-respecting dapper gentleman would wear because

a. it doesn't have eight yards of material in it
b. the pleats aren't "deep enough"

So....says the spendthrift gentleman who has saved his pennies, nickels and silver dollars, as well as his Trust Fund payout. I will demand that my kiltmaker pleat to double-setts so that I shall have a truly fine kilt!

How much yardage, then, in our kilt with a six-inch sett, pleated to double-setts?

31 pleats X 12 inches per pleat = 372 inches or 10.33 yards.just in the pleats.

add in another yard for the over apron and first pleat, and the under-apron and kick pleat and you have a 12.3 yard kilt. Let's see, that means buying 6.3 yards of tartan, at $70 a yard, uh... $440 worth of tartan at $70 a yard, and we still have to pay for the labor to sew the thing up. It will cost a MINT in materials and weigh Lord knows how much to wear.

Question: What factors influence pleat depth, sett size and yardage of the kilt?

Let's work it out.