USA Kilts: Tartans Journey from Across the Pond
We caught up with Rocky, owner of USA Kilts, to find out what tartan means to him and how the unique textile has inspired him to create USA Kilts
How and why did you start USA Kilts?
In my mid-20s, I’d fallen in love with a lot of Irish music, Scottish music, the culture of Ireland and Scotland, and then that extended into kilts, and my love and my passion for it just became an obsession. I started learning everything I could about the different clans in Scotland about the culture itself and it brought me to kilts, wanting to wear the kilt and wanting to express that part of my heritage.
When we first started the company, it was really just two people in my kitchen with an old sewing machine. I actually had to borrow my mom's old sewing machine to start making kilts ourselves. We just basically took patterns and kilts that existed and started playing around them and trying to figure out how they were constructed.
Then we would look at kilts from this kilt maker or from that kilt maker and kind of reverse engineer it and say, okay, oh, that's why they did it, or they had this technique and I like this part from this one, this part from this one, and kind of Frankenstein our own model. We then started at the lower end of the scale making more casual daily wear type kilts and eventually over time perfected our kilts craft and kind of moved up the scale to make traditional 8-yard kilts as well.
How long had you been designing kilts before delving into the more traditional designs?
When I first started making kilts, I had never sewn really anything before in my life. I took home economics class and had to make a pillow. That was my only experience for the sewing machine. I really had to rely on my engineering wiring in my brain and kind of reverse engineering how other people made it and my curiosity, my love and my passion for it really drove me to try to do it the best I could and to over engineer it in some ways and make it better or improve on it.
I remember the first time that I had that ‘aha’ moment where I thought this could actually work and it was the first year, we did Celtic Classic. it was 2004 and I remember there was tens of thousands of people there and we had a tiny little 10 foot by 10 foot booth. We weren’t prepared for the reaction that we were going to get, and it was just rows of people coming into the booth who wanted to try on kilts, see what we had to offer and wanted to talk to us about the process and everything that was all involved with it. And then it clicked wow, these people are just like me. They have the same passion that I do. They care about this stuff to the same level that I do. I found my tribe. I found the audience. I know what these people want because I am them.
We are the exact same cut from the same bolt of cloth, pun absolutely intended.
Can you share your thoughts on tartan and the cultural and global significance of the textile.
Tartan is Scotland's gift to the world. Now, obviously Scotland didn't invent tartan, but they sure as hell perfected it. I cannot think of another article of clothing or another type of fabric that has the meaning and the symbolism imbued in it that tartan does.
Anywhere you go in the world, you know that someone wearing tartan probably has some sort of connection either to a clan or to Scotland itself. And whether it's the diaspora, whether it's Canadians, Australians, Americans, Germans, it doesn't matter who it is. We have an appreciation for this textile the same way that the Scots do.
We come at it from a different angle. It's not part of the background of our culture the way it is in Scotland, but for those who wear the kilt and those who wear Tartan, it has that same special meaning that it does to the Scots. Why do Americans connect with Tartan? We occasionally get asked by Scottish people, why is there any interest in Tartan and kilt in America or in Canada as part of the diaspora and the thing that that I think gets lost in the pond, so to speak, is the reasons why we're wearing it. We're not dressing up to play Scot. We're not trying to be Scottish. We're simply doing it to connect with our heritage.
The melting pot that is America. We are Puerto Rican, we're German, we're Scottish, we're Irish, we are all these different things coming from all these very different places.
It's the tapestry, it's the quilt, the patchwork quilt of America that allows us to celebrate different cultures simultaneously. So wearing a kilt or wearing tartan just allows one more connection that we can make with different parts of our cultural heritage.
