Macdonald Sporrans

Yet further proof that Scottish culture has influence in the strangest of places, as a small French Atlantic island called Ouessant has created a distinctive Celtic tartan and registered it with the overseers of the traditional motif in Scotland. Following the visit of MSP Rob Gibson to his island home, Serge Cariou (Ouessant, Brittany, France) decided to design his own tartan.

“A few of us wear kilts on Ouessant, to cock a snook at outsiders as a joke. So, after a trip to Scotland, we thought ‘Why not design a tartan in our island’s colours?’,” Serge Cariou said in Brest, on mainland Brittany.

According to Cariou, the new Ouessant tartan includes red, yellow and black to represent the flag of the Isle of Ushant and a black, green and white check to represent Brittany. You can see the tartan below:

Ouessant, known as Enez Eusa in Breton, lies around 30 kilometres (20 miles) off the Breton peninsula, making it the most westerly inhabited territory in France, and shares Brittany’s Celtic culture and traditions. Jean-Yves Cozan, who represents the Ouessant Township and the District of Ouessant on the County Council of Finistere, has kindly authorised the use of the name ‘Oeussant’ and ‘Eusa’ for the registration of the tartan.

“This tartan is not a gimmick, it’s an act of cultural identity to assert that we have roots,” declared Cozan, Ouessant regional councillor.

“Just as a rootless Japanese puts his kimono on when he gets home, I’ll put my kilt on when I get back to Ouessant,” he said, brandishing a Eusa kilt cut for the occasion by a Scottish tailor.

The Eusa design has been entered on the Scottish Register of Tartans as number 10,236, 10 years after a loosening of the rules as to who can declare a tartan led to an explosion of non-Scottish and non-clan motifs.

The Scottish Register of Tartans (the Register) is a national repository of tartan designs and has thousands of different designs registered. You can search for many of these tartans on our own tartan finder. Why not give it a try?

We’ve just put some helpful new measuring guides online which you can find here: Measuring Guides.

We know that it’s difficult buying clothes without trying them on, especially if they’re being custom made for you! However, taking a couple of minutes to get accurate measurements before ordering means that your brand new kilt is much more likely to fit perfectly.

As always, we’d love some feedback on what you think of them. Drop us an email, leave a  comment  or give us a call to let us know how they could be improved.

We like to think here at Macdonald Sporrans that the kilt is a pretty damn sexy piece of clothing. And now it is official. In a recent poll of international traditional clothing, 67 per cent of respondents put the kilt in top position, with many women describing it as “very attractive” on a man – single guys take note!

The survey of 2,034 people by travel website www.sunshine.co.uk showed the kilt was streets ahead of it’s nearest rivals – the kimono from Japan and the hulu skirt from Hawaii; the Mexican sombrero was also popular. However, German lederhosen was considered “very unfashionable” by 87 per cent of people.

In a more humorous aspect of the results, as many as 24 per cent thought the shell suit best represented England’s national dress.

The kilt has enjoyed a constant popularity over the years and lately prominent fashion designers such as Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood have brought the item onto the catwalks of the fashion world; most prominently the New York fashion show, “Dressed to Kilt”.

Tessa Hartmann, Scottish Fashion week organiser has said: “The kilt is one of the most iconic fashion outfits in the world. It dates back to the 16th century and has been constantly updated. Designers continue to do different things with it; people like Paul Smith, Vivienne Westwood and the late Alexander McQueen have had great fun with the kilt.”

She added: “If you can pull off (wearing] a kilt, you can excel. It’s much more of a statement than a black tie.”

We ourselves have seen a great increase of kilts being sold to countries such as Australia, France, Germany and even as far as Singapore. This just goes to show that you don’t have to be Scottish to wear a kilt and look great. So if you are looking to wow the ladies at your next wedding do then get in touch!

This morning we’ve introduced a new system in the way we price products with custom tartans which will make it clearer and easier for our customers to use.

Due to the large number of cloths we offer, the price of our kilts is comprised of 2 factors: the cost of making the kilt and the cloth used to make it. As with all our prices, we aim to be as transparent as possible when calculating retail prices.

Our old system showed the price of products excluding the cost of the cloth. So, an 8 yard kilt would show as £188, and the cloth would add £100-£300 on top of that price. We felt that this was somewhat misleading to our customers who initially thought they might be able to purchase a kilt for £188, and not many people want a kilt made with no cloth! (although we’re happy if you want to supply the cloth yourself).

Today, we’ve introduced a change which makes this a bit clearer.

We now show the price of an 8 yard kilt as the total of the cost to make the kilt and the cost of the cheapest cloth available for that kilt. We display this as ‘From £288′ (using the £188 cost of making the kilt and presuming the cheapest cloth adds £100). We feel this gives you a more accurate starting price when viewing our range of kilts on offer, and a good estimate of what it will cost to have a kilt made for you.

Don’t worry, we’ve not limited our range of cloths available in any way, and you can still have a kilt made in any cloth. Now, when you view our range of tartans, you will see how much it will cost to have your product in that tartan, rather than the price per metre of the cloth. So when viewing the tartans for a 5 yard kilt, you’ll see the range of cloths available with how much each cloth adds to the product (eg +£10, +£50). That way you’ll be able to compare the cost of the kilt in each of the tartans, from each of the mills, a lot more clearly.

Finally, when you save a kilt in your shopping cart and log out, when you log back in again, the tartan you’ve chosen will be remembered.

We hope you’ll find this updated pricing structure useful when purchasing a new kilt outfit, or custom made kilt.

You can see all of this in action on our kilts page.

Another new addition to our website is our 5 Yard Wool Stock Kilt. We believe this will be a fantastic new option for our customer as it offers the quality of a pure wool kilt and the delivery speed of a stock item. The kilt is available in six tartans – Black Watch, Freedom, Hamilton Grey, Heritage Black, Heritage of Scotland and Royal Stewart.

The kilt is made in Scotland from 5 yards of 16oz pure wool tartan cloth and it is pleated to the sett. Pleating to the sett is the most common type of pleating which results in the kilt looking the same at the front and the back. A full sett of the tartan is folded into each pleat so that the tartan appears to be continuous across all the pleats.

It is made with a 100% cotton lining to make it more comfortable to wear. The kilt has 2 leather straps to fasten kilt – 1 on each side and these straps allow the kilt to be expanded by roughly 2″ above stated size. As it is a stock kilt it has a standard 24″ drop, but the kilt is made in such a way that the drop can be altered by any good tailor quite easily.

The kilt is priced at the fantastically low cost of £141 and is dispatched from stock, usually within 3-5 working days. When you compare this to our 5 Yard Custom Made Wool Kilt, which has an average price of £200 and a dispatch time of 4-6 weeks, the benefits of having such an option available are immediately apparent.

We are very excited to be able to provide yet more choice for our customers and we believe this is another step to providing a kilt for any price range. From our 8 Yard Poly-Viscose Stock Kilt at £41 to our 8 Yard Custom Made Kilt at an average of £350 we feel this is a perfect high quality option for those looking at a price range somewhere between these two.

It’s time to celebrate here at Macdonald Sporrans, our eBay store now has over 1000 items for sale! Recent additions this month include some very classy ruche ties in a lovely variety of colours. We have packaged these with some formal white shirts, which can also be bought separately. Also, we have added some kilt belt & buckle sets, choose from a beautiful range of belt buckles featuring Celtic and Scottish designs. A great way to finish off your kilt package.

If you’re hunting around for your ideal kilt outfit but don’t quite know what a box pleat is, or can’t decide between a hand stitched kilt or a machine stitched kilt, then head over to our kilt information pages to find out all about kilts.

We’ve just slashed our prices on our brown leather sporrans and brown kilt belts to clear existing stock.

Check out our specials here to view more fantastic offers on kilt outfits and kilt accessories.

Need a cheap kilt? Check out our range of kilt outfits.

We’re pleased to announce a staggering £30 discount on our 5 yard custom made kilts. This price drop is not part of our sale, but part of our continual strive to improve our products and services. This kilt is custom made to order in Scotland by experienced kilt makers, and can be made from tartan cloth from many of the large Scottish mills and weavers including Lochcarron and House of Edgar.

You may also want to view our 8 yard custom made kilt and 8 yard stock kilts.

If so, we recommend you shop somewhere else!

We don’t sell cheap kilts, we sell great value kilts. All our kilts are good enough to be worn by us, and we don’t wear cheap kilts. We offer a full range of competitively price kilts and kilt outfits, but none of our kilts are ‘cheap’. They’re all made to a high standard with good quality materials, but we have them made in bulk to set sizes in a non-wool material. This allows us to offer great kilts at great prices.