Next Up in Fiber Nation: Lifting the Hem on Scottish Kilts

When we set out to do an episode about the Scottish kilt, we found ourselves in for way more than we bargained for. We knew there would be a certain amount of myth-busting (spoiler alert: clan tartans are an invented tradition.) However, we had no idea how twisted the history of the kilt really is. Not all Scots wore a kilt: it was mainly Highlander garb. And not all Highland Scots wore a kilt, especially if they were lords. In fact, those lords often wanted to look and dress like Englishmen, who wore the precursor of the sober three-piece suit.

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Sir John Sinclair, a Scottish lord, wore English dress in town but donned the kilt when in the Highlands.

The kilt rose to fame as the “uniform” of Jacobite rebels: Scots who supported a Stuart king over George I of England. After crushing the Jacobite forces at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, the English banned the kilt as a symbol of rebellion. And boy did that backfire: suddenly everyone wanted to wear the kilt. Fabric merchants saw a chance to market surplus tartan fabric as “ancestral” plaids, and the whole “discover your clan ancestry” boom became the 18^th century’s version of AncestryDNA.

Even the English King George IV wore the full Highland dress while in Scotland.

Two real gobsmackers in this episode are that the first “official” tartan pattern was anti-Highlander, and the kilt we know today MAY have been the invention of an Englishman.

That’s a lot to pack into one episode.

Our guest is Richard Thompson Ford, a law professor at Stanford and one of Esquire’s “Best Dressed Real Men.” As he cheerfully admitted, this was the weirdest podcast interview he’s ever been asked to do. We want to thank him for being such a good sport.

Happy Listening,
Allison