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This article is from The Gazette, Sunday July 30, 2000. Thanks to CroweMate Veronique for posting it.

All in a pleat

Scottish designer defends his kilt 'liberation'

NICOLAS VAN PRAET

Actor Russell Crowe looked dignified, and, to some women, hunky as hell, showing some knee as he played Maximus in the movie Gladiator.

Scottish kilt-designer Howie Nicholsby argues: So can you, man. And it doesn't have to be a wool skirt, either.

After The Gazette editorial board trashed Nicholsby for dispensing with traditional wool kilts Scots have worn for 200 years in favour of designs made of vinyl, fake leather, leopard print, camouflage denim and tweeds, the 21-year-old Edinburgh designer, whose family owns the established Geoffrey Tailor Kiltmakers, yesterday defended his kilt "liberation" on Montreal radio.

"I feel the kilt needs to evolve, which is what we're doing," Nicholsby told a Montreal audience on Radio Centre-Ville 102.3 FM. "We're making sure it survives and goes on into the future. People don't want to be restricted by the tartan. They want to be contemporary."

Nicholsby, who runs 21st Century Kilts as an offshoot of his family's company, said he can't understand why traditionalists would bash an effort to get more men to dress up in the same garb the ancient Egyptians, Romans, Greeks and Scots have worn.

But purist Montrealer Sterling Parsons said: "I would stick to the original. If you're going to go out and spend the money, I would buy a heavy kilt right off the bat."

Nicholsby argues his kilts are for real men doing real things like going to the office, hanging out with their buddies and going clubbing. He even makes a "combat kilt" with detachable outside pockets - kind of a modern version of Crowe's oh-my-gawd-he-looks-so-good-in-that! battle-cloth.

"For over 10 years, there have been kilts with pockets," the young designer insists. "Traditionalists out in Canada, being out in Canada, I'm sure they are a bit behind in the actual development of real kilt-makers in Scotland."

Since making his first pro-type kilt, a silver Star Wars number made from PVC, Nicholsby said he has sold all sorts of designs to hundreds of men everywhere, including North America. Prices start at $550.

"It's really good-looking stuff and they've been very popular with older customers," Nicholsby told The Gazette in an interview after the radio show. "There are no set laws on what makes a kilt. All the guidelines you really have is that it is to be a pleated skirt."

Nicholsby said a traditional kilt sits too high for many men - just above the rib cage. "They're quite fitted. It feels like a corset." He makes his kilts to fit on the hips or lower and likes to wear his own kilt with black sneakers.

"I'm seen as a bit controversial," he said. "But in actual fact, I really am coming from a É traditional background. There's demand for these things from Scottish people."

But other kilt-makers have told him to keep it traditional. One group, calling itself the Scottish Highlands and Islands Tartan Police, calls Nicholsby's kilts sacrilege.

"When I find the person responsible," it writes on its Internet site, "I will personally remove his-her gizzard and hang it around their necks."

"I'm not saying don't go out and wear Prince Charlie's and traditional tartan kilts," Nicholsby retorted. "I'm saying it can be more than that, though. God, if you look back to the '70s or '60s and think about what men walked about in then, this is nothing. Menswear is very, very boring."

Nicholsby figures his designs would be warm enough for the Canadian cold. Men here can run around in the snow in them, he said, like the Highlanders use to run around Scotland.

"Oh, it's very refreshing," he said.

But Howie, will it make me look like Russell Crowe, damnit?

"Don't all the women out there wish!"

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