The kilt is a knee-length pleated garment of tartan wool, wrapped around the waist and fastened with buckles. It is genuine formal dress in Scotland, worn at weddings, graduations, formal dinners and rugby internationals by men who would not otherwise dress up at all.
The history is more recent than people think
The garment worn by Highlanders before the eighteenth century was the féileadh mòr — the “great kilt” or belted plaid: a single length of cloth some five metres long, pleated by hand on the ground, belted at the waist, with the upper half thrown over the shoulder as a cloak. It doubled as a blanket.
The modern short kilt — tailored, with the pleats sewn in — is credited to Thomas Rawlinson, an English Quaker who ran an ironworks in Lochaber in the 1720s and wanted something more practical for his Highland workers around furnaces. The story is disputed by some, and is the accepted account.
The ban
After the Jacobite defeat at Culloden in 1746, the Dress Act made Highland dress illegal for civilians, with transportation as the penalty for a second offence. It was part of a broader dismantling of clan society and Gaelic culture.
The ban lasted 36 years and was repealed in 1782 — by which time Highland dress had been thoroughly romanticised. Its revival was completed by George IV’s visit to Edinburgh in 1822, stage-managed by Sir Walter Scott, at which the king appeared in a kilt with flesh-coloured tights and the Lowland Scottish gentry enthusiastically adopted a costume most of their ancestors had never worn.
What is worn with it
Full Highland dress is a proper outfit, and getting the parts right matters:
- Sporran — the pouch hanging at the front, because a kilt has no pockets.
- Kilt hose — long socks turned over below the knee, with flashes, small strips of fabric showing at the fold.
- Ghillie brogues — shoes with long laces wound around the ankle.
- Sgian-dubh — a small knife tucked into the top of the right sock, pronounced skee-an DOO. Now purely ornamental, and increasingly one with a blunt or fake blade for legal reasons.
- Kilt pin — worn on the outer apron only, and never pinning the two layers together, which stops the kilt hanging properly.
The question everybody asks
Yes, that one. The traditional answer is that a true Scotsman wears nothing underneath — an idea the Scottish Tartans Authority once publicly described as unhygienic and was roundly criticised for.
In practice a large proportion of kilt wearers do wear something, particularly for a full day of a wedding, and the etiquette is that it is nobody’s business. Asking is a tourist move, and asking to check is considerably worse.
Buying or hiring
A hand-sewn kilt in eight yards of quality wool costs several hundred pounds and takes weeks to make, and will outlast the wearer. Hiring a full outfit for a wedding is entirely normal and costs a fraction of that. Anyone may wear a kilt regardless of ancestry; the only real rule is not to claim a clan tartan you have no connection to, and even that is treated lightly.