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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   3087 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 29, 2024

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When was the last time the last Scottish people wore kilts unselfconsciously or unironically?

Scotsmen wear kilts now, unselfconsciously and unironically. There are three main cases where they are worn:

  1. As formal dress, usually with black tie accompaniments like bow ties. Think weddings, graduations, proms, formal birthday parties.
  2. For things related to Scottish heritage, i.e. Burns Night, Hogmanay (New Year's), ceilidhs (group folk dancing)
  3. For sport, usually with thick football/rugby socks and boots, plus team jerseys

Now of course, that doesn't mean that Scotsmen wear them every day. The only guys who do that are really into their Scottish nationalism, and usually members of the underclass or hippies. I suppose because they lack status in regular society, they attach themselves to their national identity more strongly. Typically they wear something like this.

In the lowlands, kilts were never everyday dress. They were highland dress that was only adopted by lowlanders after the military threat from the highland was vanquished and the kilt was safe to become an expression of Scottish identity more broadly.

See to me all those cases, dress codes and nationalists, are self consciously wearing it, in direct opposition to the normal clothes they typically wear or understand as normal clothing. It seems to me like it's been a while since a scotsman put on a kilt without thinking about the English he was unlike by doing so.

That seems a weird way of framing it. Where you live, it's understood that if you're attending a wedding or a funeral, you're meant to dress formally. Does that mean that when you put on your tie and cufflinks, you're doing so "self-consciously"? I wouldn't think so. Scotland is the same, it's just that their conception of formal dress is different from yours.

Does that mean that when you put on your tie and cufflinks, you're doing so "self-consciously"?

Yes, in a sense. I'm very self conscious when putting on a tie, these days, that I'm dressing like a different person, and putting on that persona as part of the act.

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