Lets get funky

Scottish culture has played a major role in the fashion industry in recent years. Kate Patrick went in search of Scottish style gurus

When Howie Nicholsby redefined the traditional kilt by producing it for 21st-Century Kilts low-slung and in leather, dark grey wool or even camouflage print for one well-known British pop star, he may have sparked a small army of Scottish designers into rethinking how they could make the most of their internationally recognisable tools.

Traditionalists might suck their teeth and grimace, rigor mortis-style, but Nicholsby wasn't the first designer to recognise the potential of a quintessential Scottish totem, and to pick it up and shake some fresh air into it. Rarely does the fashion clock tick through a whole 365 days without tartan making an appearance somewhere.

Vivienne Westwood created an entire, fabulous ‘Highland Warrior' collection for men in 1996 that featured mini kilts, traditionally-shaped kilt jackets in cream wool with rosebuds, flowing tartan capes with lace jabots and waistcoats with pom-poms.

Westwood has always been one for mixing it, and she makes Nicholsby look conservative by comparison. But if he – without going to quite the lengths Westwood was prepared to contemplate – could make the traditional kilt ‘funky' for a whole new generation, why could sporrans not come in for a bit of a makeover too?

And if London-based accessories designers like Anya Hindmarch could do well out of selling bags sporting photographic prints of people's faces, why couldn't a Scottish designer do the same with the pert image of a heilan' coo?

Well, here's the news: ...

To read the rest of this article you can do any of the following.

• By : Kate Patrick
• In : Contemporary Scotland
• Issue : 21
• Page : 42
• Words : 1,302