Figure 1.--This photograph is my two sisters and me. The girls are wearing the kilts that eventually became mine and were then passed on to my younger *rother.

I am course am Scottish and I grew up in the 1950s and 60s in Scotland. My mother was a big believer in the kilt. Both my sisters and I wore kilts. I wore both short rtousers and kilts, but for dress occasions my mother generally preferred a kilt.

My clothes varied some what, depending on the occasion, but I wore the kilt a great deal as a boy. I wore the kilt from age 6 to age 16.
Play: For play I normally wore a jersey (sweater), kilt, socks and either plimsolls or sandals.
Dressup: For dress occasions I wore a shirt or jersey and tie and perhaps a pullover, a kilt, knee length socks and lace up shoes. I always wore my kilt with a Harris tweed kilt jacket when dressing up.
School: For school I wore my kilt and the school blazer with a shirt and tie and school knee socks and black leather lace up shoes and all the other bits and pieces, vest and green pants.

Both my sisters wore kilts. Those kilts eventually became mine and were then passed on to my brother. I didn't mind wearing a kilt that my sister had worn before me. The kilt is after all a male garment and was not really associated with girls even though girls wore the kilt too. My brother used to say that his kilt was already third hand by the time he got it, but he still wore it, not perhaps as much as I did.

I wore one of the kilts in cub uniform. Latter my brother also wore the kilts. In my cub pack, most of the boys wore short trousers. Occasionally, however, one of the us cubs wore kilts. Whether a boy wore kilts or shorts was determined by the parents of the boy. Some cub packs requested prospective cubs to wear the kilt, but mostly it was up to the parents. In our pack Akela liked the boys who had the kilt to wear them and would say so. So I guess that could be construed as encouraging the wearing of the kilt by the cubs. It was more common for Scouts to wear kilts, but some us cubs occasionally wore them also. Cubs that wore the kilt used to wear the kilt when they moved up to the scout troop.

Unlike my sisters I usually got to wear a sporan with my kilt.

Figure 2.--Here I am at about 5 years of age with my mother. I am wearing my kilt with a sweater. Note the sporan.

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[Kilt suits] [Scottish kilts] [Scottish boys clothing] [Scottish school uniform]
[Highland dance] [Irish kilts] [Irish boys clothing] [Irish school uniform]
[Irish step dancing] [Greek kilts]

Created: October 14, 1999
Last updated: October 15, 1999