Have you ever been given a list
of rules for how to wear a kilt?
Have you ever been badgered or worse
still badgered somebody else about where, when, and how they re supposed to
wear it like this and not like that?
I want you to think a little differently, so
If you re interested in the people, places and events in Scottish
history then click the subscribe button at the bottom right of the screen
In the meantime, let me tell you a story
The first time we drive a car, we subject
ourselves to a whole new set of rules.
The first time I wore a kilt was as a
four-year-old kid dressed up for Sunday school
and no there are no surviving photographs
but somebody else decided I would wear it, how it should be worn and why
the occasion was appropriate.
The first time I dressed myself in
a kilt was when I got married.
An outfitter had hired me the kilt
with a set of rules to follow:
how high to the knee, where to position the
sporran, how to tie the laces of the brogues
the appropriateness of undergarments
you know the kind of thing
Where did all the rules come from?
Did Highland cattle drovers of the 17th and early 18th Century follow these rules?
What tartan could they wear? Was it a Bonnie Prince Charlie jacket, or an Argyll...
what social faux pas would you commit by twisting the laces of your brogues
twice rather than three times?
Highland dress was practical
clothing, worn by: clansmen, farmers, drovers, wielders
of swords and ploughshares
but it was the raising of those
swords that changed things.
You ve probably heard that after
the fateful and fatal Jacobite uprising of 1745 came to an end at Culloden
the kilt was banned That s not strictly true.
It was only banned in certain Highland counties.
Dunbarton, Stirling, Perth, Kincardine...
Aberdeen, Inverness, Nairn, Cromarty,
Argyll, Forfar, Banff, Sutherland,
Caithness, Elgin and Ross
Women could wear it. Nobility
could wear it Most of all
if you joined the British
army, you could wear it
From August 1746 through to 1782 able
bodied man could only wear highland dress
if they submitted to the rigours
and rules of military discipline so Highland dress wasn t quite banned
but it was weighed down by more rules than a lead filled sporran and it has been ever since.
Today I want to liberate you.
I say I want to liberate you. Don t think I
am an expert on Highland dress. I m not
but wait till you meet the
woman who lives in here.
She has made kilts for royalty, she s featured
on BBC1s Celebrity Atinques Road Trip,
She offers a fantastic online course where
she teaches ordinary folk like you and me to make bespoke, not rule bound, kilts
with over 40 hours of video lessons, an accompanying training manual and twice weekly
zoom coaching to fit in with your lifestyle.
She has got to be THE most knowledgeable kiltmaker
I ve ever come across, and in the comfort of your own home she ll pass that knowledge on to you.
What she does is fantastic.
But you don t have to take a course
to start learning from Marion. Foster
Next week, as one of my monthly conversations
with experts for Patreon members I ll be sitting down to put
your questions to her.
So, if you re not a Patreon member then click
the white tab up there, sign up and send in your questions on the kilt and kilt making.
Where have you been? I ve been waiting ages.
I heard you blethering on
I wasn t banging on, I was telling them all about you. I haven t even
told them about your theatre work yet . Hold on
Whilst we get the kettle on, here s a wee
reminder of Highland Dress before it was banned.
The great kilt, the feileadh m r,
An fh ilidh mor, the great wrap.
That is exactly what it was a great
blanket of double width of woollen cloth.
You fold it into pleats over
a belt. You lie down on it.
Pull the belt around you and you
now have a kilt a jacket and a blanket for a winter s night all in one.
Flexible, durable, and for a pastoral people practical.
but as society was changing from pastoral to industrial the
definition of practical was changing.
Like all things kilt related
there s a bit of debate about whether the next bit is myth or reality,
but the story goes that in the aftermath
of the 1715 Jacobite uprising,
General Wade was building roads to open
up the Highlands to the military.
This also opened the area up to trade or
economic exploitation from the south,
your definition may depend on your politics.
A guy from the north of England called Thomas Rawlanson set up a charcoal and
smelting business in the Highlands.
Now he thought that this belted great kilt, so
practical for the pastoral life was cumbrous and unwieldy for men working
in his new industrial works.
There was no need for the upper half of
the great kilt in charcoal or iron works.
So he hooked up with a military tailor in
Inverness and between them they got rid of the upper plaid and used a single width
of material rather than a double width.
The feileadh mor had just become
the feileadh beag. The small wrap.
Now the relationship between Jacobitism, the
British army and rules imposed form the south was going to become a theme in
the development of the kilt
and it was after the last great rising that
the kilt, great or small was proscribed unless you joined the British army.
It was within the British army that the kilt that we know today was developed.
Uniform brought uniformity of regimental patterns, but that didn t happen straight away.
At first you could find different tartan patterns used in the same regiment
depending on what material was available now and what was left over from before.
Now if for a generation or two you force civilian Highlanders to dress
like their southern neighbours,
it doesn t take long before nobody thinks
to dress, day to day, like grandad did
and ordinary country folk wouldn t have the funds
to invest in a kilt for a special occasion
but highland gents were appearing in
portraits in all their tartan finery.
So the kilt became the preserve
of the military and those who could afford the peacock strut of fashion.
In both these environments: rules,
regulations and dress codes are the norm.
Whereas the weaving of tartan had been
a cottage industry, the ban meant that there was no point in small scale production
and as skills became lost in the Highlands...
the gap was filled by larger lowland operations,
with Bannockburn becoming a centre of commerce.
In 1778 The Highland Society of
London was formed and in the 1790s
William Wilson & son start exporting tartan to
clothe slaves in the Americas and Caribbean.
A situation where those at the
top and those at the very bottom are tartan clad by haughty choice
or ignominious servitude,
whilst those in the middle can scarce
afford the luxury is a surreal picture.
Meanwhile in the British army somebody
decided that rather than have to do all the folding and wrapping of a morning
you could fold the kilt so that a bright line of colour ran down each visible surface fold and
the top of the folds could be stitched together.
This first tailored kilt
would be called a box kilt.
It would take around three and a half yards
of tartan material to make a box kilt
OK maybe a few more in my case
After the Battle of Waterloo kilted soldiers in Paris draw the eyes of the
ladies and the question starts to arise as to what s worn under the kilt.
That s right it s a French idea!
In 1817 Walter Scott s Rob Roy was published.
Two years later William Wilson & Son of Bannockburn produce
a pattern book of over 240 tartans.
Five years after that Walter Scott organises the
Highland pageant for the visit of George IV.
I made a video called Walter Scott Made us
Wear the Kilt, I ll leave a link at the end.
The kilt was now transformed from practical
peasant garb to aristo military attire.
Queen Victoria buys Balmoral in 1847.
Four years later her children appear dressed in tartan at the opening of
the Great Exhibition in London.
The sun permanently shone on the British Empire
Consumerism grew and the outfitters found fashion rules to justify selling more material.
The boxes in the kilt became narrower and the pleats became deeper, so gradually
instead of three and a half yards
you now needed to buy five and
a half yards to make a kilt.
Now if you were short of cash then the advantage
of the box kilt is that when it starts to show wear and tear on the outer material,
you could have the stitching taken out and refold the box to reveal material
that had been hidden inside the pleat
and hey presto, you have a new kilt to get
extra years wear or to pass down to your son.
Then in the 1890s Boom!
Instead of boxes showing the stripe down the pleat why don t we make a series of knife
pleats all the way round the back.
There ll be a flat apron panel at the front, where
the pattern of the tartan can be clearly seen,
but what we ll do is we ll fold the
pleats all the way round the back
so the pattern set will be visible even though it s pleated.
That sounds complicated.
Aye but we ll sell oodles more
tartan maybe up to eight yards
What about the full 9 yards
Dinnae be silly
Retailers had taken over from the
military as the rule makers
More recently retailers have had another card
to play, but first let s remember that you don t have to follow their rules, like they ve
been brought down on tablets from Mount Sinai.
For example, in 1832 a ballet
was written called La Silphide.
It told the story of a young Scotsman
who fell in love with a wood sprite,
and as that impossible love story progressed
it promoted kilts and tartan long before anyone had heard of the Bay City Rollers
In 2020 when the ballet was put on by the Royal Danish Ballet company.
The tailors and costume department couldn t go into a tourist kiltmaker on
the Royal Mile in Edinburgh and say:
We re looking for twelve mini kilts for
the ballet dancing Sylph dervishes.
Here s my waist, hip and leg length
I ll be back next Tuesday, no,
they had to go to Marion Foster to
learn bespoke kilt making skills.
Then when the spinning angular momentum of your
mini kilt unbalances the precision pirouetting
you have to go back to Marion so she can calculate
adjustments and bring that helicopter into land.
If there s one thing that I ve learned
through my experiences with Marion
it s that getting back to the
roots and essence of the kilt isn t about following the rules that so many
so-called experts will try to impose on you.
Rules that a Highland drover
would never have heard of.
It s about looking good and feeling proud.
The one rule that she is a
stickler for is quality.
and that brings us to the last step in the
story of the kilt and the modern era.
So often with popularity comes mass
production and loss of quality
You can go up and down the Royal Mile or
Princess St today and walk into stack them high, sell them cheap tartan kitch shops.
You can see tourists walking through the Grassmarket in those horrific looking
bargain basement creased and crumpled things that look ridiculous from any direction and wonder:
Are they taking the piss?
Just a step above that are the chain
shops, probably owned by the same folk, who ll take three measurements
fire them off to a cheap offshore sweat shop and leave you looking almost as ridiculous
as George the IV in his pink tights in 1822.
As somebody who s passionate about
communicating Scottish history and culture,
who s worn the kilt on and off since a wee boy at Sunday school without really
thinking about the detail,
what this video has taught me
is the attention to detail,
and the passion that Marion has for passing
on the knowledge of proper kilt making from the heart and soul.
Now let s be honest we all work within a budget and price competitive mass
production outfitters serve a purpose,
but it s just not the same as getting back
to kiltmaking as something you did with love and care in your own home for those around you.
So, the more people that I can persuade to forget the pile them high sell them
cheap rule imposing retailers
and develop the knowledge of
kilt making the happier I ll be.
If you want to learn the skills to
make your own kilt or make them for other people be it for a family wedding,
a Highland games or just to look FANTASTIC
and do it to a higher and more bespoke
standard than they do in the shops ,
why not take one of Marion s courses, where she
ll take you step by step through the process
You just need to go to this website
by clicking the white tab up there, or the link in the description below.
You ll know it s the Scotland History Tour page because you ll see Marion
measuring me up for a kilt
and you can find out about her training.
Alternatively become a Patreon member and send her your questions for
our conversation on 25th July.
or if you d just like to hear about how Walter
Scott changed the game for kilt wearing then click the video coming up on screen now.
In the meantime
