The kilt has come to represent a natural and obvious masculinity, but it has a long history of being changed by outsiders and being made on purpose. It started as the essential clothing of the Highlander, but now both Scots and non-Scots wear it as a costume, for formal and semi-formal events, and just for everyday wear. The kilt’s ability to stay popular over many generations and, more and more, worldwide is largely due to its adaptability to new situations and customer needs.
Form and Evolution
The kilt as we know it today has its roots in the first three-quarters of the 18th century. Gaelic-speaking Highlanders called it the “little wrap” (feileadh beag). It came from the “big wrap” (feileadh mor), also called belted plaid, which was the first clearly “Scottish” outfit to appear in the late 1600s. Gaels from Scotland used to dress the same as Gaels from Ireland. They wore a shirt called the léine and a cape shaped like a half-circle, also called the Gaelic brat.
It was made of a four- to six-yard length of cotton cloth that was about two yards wide. John Telfer Dunbar writes about how the belted plaid was worn on the body in Highland Costume (1977). It was spread out on the ground, folded, and a blank space was on each side. The man laid down on it with one seam about knee-high and a belt around his waist. The bottom part looked like a kilt when he stood up, and the top could be worn around the body differently.
On the other hand, several dress writers have ruled this method out because it is not useful. They say that the easiest and fastest way to do it is to gather the pleats in your hand, wrap the plaid around your body, tie it off loosely with a belt, and then tighten it up after making one last change to the pleats.
The kilt that people wear today is the bottom part of the plaid belted pant with the back pleats sewn up. Thomas Rawlinson, an English ironmaster who hired Highlanders to work in his kilns in Glengarry, near Inverness, is credited with coming up with the idea. Instead of the belted plaid, he came up with the “little kilt” to make things easier and more efficient for the Highlanders, taking them “out of the heather and into the factory.”1 In Cut My Cote (1997), Dorothy K. Burnham says it is more possible that the change happened naturally when the warp-weighted loom gave way to the horizontal loom, which has a narrower width.
The kilt as a national dress during Romanticism
After the Jacobite Uprising of 1745, not long after the kilt was made, the Diskilting Act was passed. The Jacobites’ last chance to take back the British throne was this uprising led by Prince Charles Edward Stuart, also known as “Bonnie Prince Charlie.” In the same way that other Jacobite uprisings had done, the “Young Pretender” tried to get the backing of many Highland chiefs and their clans. When the Duke of Cumberland and his men beat the Jacobites at the Battle of Culloden (1746), they started a campaign to “pacify” the Highlands. This campaign started with fire and sword and included different types of social engineering.2 The second one banned Highland dress, which was seen as a sign of defiance and wildness from a long time ago.
Those in the military forces were exempt from the Diskilting Act. The Highland troops used to wear belted plaid, but to fit in with the rest of the British Army, they switched to a red coat with the skirts cut off so that the coat’s big folds could show. The Highland costume also includes:
- A round blue hat.
- A small leather sporran.
- Red and white knee-length hose.
- Black shoes with buckles.
But by about 1810, the Highland troops had switched from the belted plaid to the little kilt. Around the same time, the small, helpful leather sporran grew into a big, thick, fancy thing. This military style from the early 1800s greatly affected how people dressed. Several dress historians say that Highland dress would not have lived on in everyday life if the Highland regiments hadn’t been formed and dressed in parts of their native dress.
The Diskilting Act was thrown out in 1782 thanks to the work of the Highland Society of London. At that point, the kilt wasn’t worn as often as it used to be. This led to what Malcolm Chapman calls the “romantic rehabilitation of Highland dress” in The Celts: The Construction of a Myth (1992).3 The romantic look was an attack on cities and factories, and it praised the wild, uncontrolled nature.
The Highlands could be seen as a desert in the middle of the busy economy of the “new” Britain since they were no longer a threat from the north. The Highlanders went from being seen as dangerous, beardless barbarians to being admired, like a kilted version of the “noble savage.”
When King George IV went on a carefully planned state visit to Edinburgh in 1822, he wore full Highland dress and introduced the kilt to the public for the first time in a long time. This “publicity stunt” helped make the kilt the typical dress of the Scottish elite, which led to it becoming the country’s official dress. But the king’s and Scottish noblemen’s clothes were very different from what Highlanders wore a hundred years ago.
Because they were mostly made for the levée, the assembly, and the dance, the focus was on the dramatic and spectacular. Hugh Cheape wrote Tartan (1991), saying, “Highland dress turned into a tartan costume.” A stylish dress that was good for everyday use turned into a trendy clothing that didn’t care about how it worked.4
As the 1800s went on, wealthy people continued to support this new national style based in cities. It started to have “correct” items and types of clothing for day and night. From the 1840s on, Queen Victoria’s “cult of the Highlands” gave it a new boost. George IV had a romantic view of Scotland, and the queen shared it. In 1852, Prince Albert bought Balmoral Castle in Aberdeenshire. Tartan was used to decorate some parts of the inside, like the queen’s private rooms.
Victoria wore dresses made of “Dress Stewart” or “Victoria” tartan, which started a fashion trend worldwide for dresses in this pattern. However, women started wearing kilts as stylish clothes in the 20th century. After World War II, a simpler version of the kilt came out. It was a pleated, wraparound skirt belted at the waist and held in place with a big pin near the bottom. Upper- and middle-class women wore it and were part of the uniforms at private schools in England and the US, which kept the kilt’s associations with wealth and class status.
Recontextualization
At the end of the 20th century, Scotland’s cultural and political confidence grew. At the same time, “a new generation of [young] radical Scots… reclaimed the wearing of the kilt from the embrace of nearly two hundred years of establishment, commodified gentrification.”5 The day and evening clothes of the Victorian era gave way to modern styles. Lots of younger Scots started to wear their kilts every day. They would pair them with a T-shirt or sweater, a denim or leather jacket, trainers or chunky, heavy-soled boots, and wooly socks that fell around their legs. In his 2002 book The Study of Dress History, Lou Taylor writes, “Now young Scotsmen wear their kilts according to their cultural codes and national identity terms.”6
The kilt has recently become popular among people who aren’t Scottish but want to look stylish and sure of themselves. Many people think this is because of the huge success of movies like Rob Roy (1995) and Braveheart (1995). In the style of the romantic movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, these movies show the Highlander as a “warrior hero” who represents timeless, manly ideals. This idea has been strengthened through sports, most notably the Highland Games, now shown worldwide.
Men with a lot of stamina are shown competing in kilts in sports like putting the shot, throwing the caber, and throwing the weight. These days, though, Scottish sports fans have been pushing the Highlander as a perfect man. During the summer of 1998, when they were in France for the World Cup, their traditional costumes and actions got much attention. Because of these pictures, the kilt has come to stand for easy access to Highland male sexuality. Non-Scotsmen can use it to show that they are male while also being self-aware of it.
Many modern designers have used the kilt’s overtly manly associations to appeal to young men who care about fashion. In the meantime, different designers have changed parts of the kilt’s form to blur the lines between it and a “skirt.” In most cases, they have focused on cutting stand out more than the regionally specific Tartan, using nontraditional “street” materials like denim or leather and even changing the cut, length, and construction of the garment. Wearing these “skirt-kilts” is a way for men to show their true masculinity while also displaying an unusual personality.
Because of this, they have been very popular with young people and counterculture groups like the Punks in the 1970s and the New Romantics in the 1980s. Since the beginning of the 1990s, kilts and skirt kilts have become part of gay fashion. Gay men wear kilts to show how masculine they are and to show off how feminine they think they are. The kilt has become a standard piece in masculinized gay clothing.