To help serve these people better, we’ve created a Frequently Asked Questions page.

That might seem like an obvious thing to do, but it has taken us a while to come round to creating one! Why? Personally, I often find that FAQ pages are not that useful.

Generally they contain lots and lots of questions about lots of different topics, so filtering all that information to find what’s relevant to you often becomes harder than simply picking up the phone or writing an email.

Why is ours different?

Our FAQ page is based on analysis of emails and phone calls over a significant period of time (many months of data). We looked at many hundreds of emails/phone calls and analysed what people were asking most often. We then picked the 6 most frequent and easy to answer questions and put those 6, and only those 6, onto our FAQ page.

By approaching it from what our customers are asking, we feel that it should be genuinely useful for a lot of people.

What do you think? Do you find FAQ pages useful or just a dump for endless lists of questions? What do you think of ours?

1. Prince Charlie Outfit
For most people this is the first kilt outfit they will wear. Most commonly seen at weddings and formal occasions the Prince Charlie outfit can be purchased from just £251.06 for a complete package. Worn with a bow tie this is the Scottish Equivalent of a black tie outfit.

 2. Make The Look Contemporary
Try wearing your Prince Charlie outfit with a  a Victoria collar shirt and ruched tie. Add a 5 button waistcoat to transform this outfit into a more contemporary look. Worn with our without the jacket this is now suitable for less formal events or a ceilidh.

3. Go Casual

It’s amazing the difference a shirt makes. A ghillie shirt is a great option for wearing your kilt to highland games and ceilidh’s. Wear this with a leather sporran and either your brogues or regular day shoes.

4. Everyday Wear

Team your kilt with a cashmere jumper for a kilt outfit which meets everyday requirements. You can add a clan or tartan tie to dress this outfit up.

5. Take it on Tour

There is no denying the Scots are in town for rugby or football matches when a kilted army of supporters arrive. Wear a rugby shirt with a poly-viscose kilt for this match day look. Suitable for travelling and match day, you’ll be able to travel light.

These are just a few suggestions for making the most of your kilt outfit. Other suggestions can be found on buyakilt.com. Share your outfit choices with a post or picture on Facebook or Twitter.

Why April 6th?
We already have St Andrews’ Day and even Burns Night as days when we celebrate everything that’s great about Scotland and being Scottish. April 6th is the date that the Declaration of Arbroath was signed which was a declaration of Scottish independence made in 1320.  A tartan day event was originally held in Canada in the 1980′s, with events in America soon following.

What can I expect? 
Across the USA and Canada there will be many pipe band marches and clan gatherings to mark this occasion. The event is so big in New York they actually have a tartan week with a high profile fashion show, parade and a 10k kilted run through Central Park. Closer to home the Tartan Day events focus around Arbroath with a reconstruction of the signing of the declaration.

People use tartan day as an opportunity to show their clan colours, either in their kilts, or plaids and scarves. Use our updated tartan finder to search for your tartan.

For those not lucky enough to attend an event this year don’t feel left out, use this as a day to wear you’re kilt and educate others on tartan day. You can also view www.tartandayscotland.com for event information, quizzes, recipes and cocktails.

Let us know how you’ll be celebrating on Facebook and Twitter.

Previously, our range of kilts were split between 4 sub-categories, so you could only view one range of kilts at a time.

Today, we’ve put all of our kilts into a single category, so that you can compare them side by side. We’ve also added a couple of filters so that you can narrow down the list a little.

We’ve been trialling this change for a few weeks and the feedback has been that having all the kilts together is much better, so we’ve rolled it out for everyone today.

View our full range of kilts at buyakilt.com/kilts.

I love it when we find improvements like this that make the user experience much nicer.

You can test it out on any of our products that are custom made in any tartan, such as our traditional 8 yard kilt.

The largest St Patrick’s Day parade takes place is in New York and has been held every year on March 17th since 1762, this year marking it’s 250th anniversary. This is primarily a military parade with many pipe bands, and up to 300,000 participants. Irish Pipe bands will often wear kilts are part of their uniform and are joined by numerous kilt wearers amongst the spectators.

It is fitting that the largest St Patrick’s parade is held in the USA seeing as 11.9% of Americans can trace their heritage back to Ireland. 22 of the US presidents including 44th President Barack Obama trace their roots back to Ireland.

For a limited run only we have added a section to our website dedicated to Irish outfits making it easy for you to view our range. Leading up to St Patrick’s Day you’ll also find these items on sale. Show everyone this year your Irish heritage and get ready to join one of the biggest celebrations in the world.

Well, let’s travel back to the days when battles scarred Scottish soil. In those times, armies were constantly evolving and trying to think of ways to distract and destroy the enemy. The Romans had their durable formations, the English employed huge barrages of arrows, and the Scots? The Scots allegedly flashed.

Whether this was to show they were tough enough to march through stinging nettles with no pants on is unsure. But one thing’s for certain – it won them a few battles. While wearing nothing under a kilt is a supposed tradition, it’s up for debate whether this is entirely acceptable.

Leading Scottish kilt-makers are changing their hire terms. Indeed, you won’t find a kilt on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile without signing a disclaimer. And it’s not just the common man who’s asked to be careful with his kilt - Ewan McGregor, Sean Connery and Billy Connolly have all been there.

One hire firm has actually come up with a rhyme to get their message across:

‘Though Scots like to prance

About in their kilts wearing nae pants

Fir the next punter make it fair

Dinnae firgit to wear a pair.’

The question’s still up for debate, and it really is your decision to make. But if we had to advise on the ‘pants or no pants’ question, we’d suggest wearing underwear even if the kilt’s your own.

After all, you can always find other ways to offend your mother-in-law.

‘Scotsmen have always worn tartan skirts’

The truth is, the Scots didn’t actually wear tartan kilts until the eighteenth century. They wore tartan, but they didn’t wear kilts. Rather, they wore knee-length tartan shirts, held up by a belt around the middle.

‘The kilt is a Scottish invention’

The kilt was actually invented by an Englishman in 1727. The man was Thomas Rawlinson, and he came up with the idea while in the Highlands – surprisingly, it was a simple case of charity and practicality. You see, during the eighteenth century, the average Scotsman was poor – so poor that he couldn’t afford a pair of trousers. As an entrepreneur of ironworks in Scotland, Rawlinson felt that his men were hindered by their clothing. He also knew they couldn’t afford trousers (and he didn’t want to cough up the cash himself) so invented the kilt, which proved to be an immediate success. Most Scots didn’t fancy it to be as good as a pair of trousers, but then they were already used to wearing those awkward knee-length tartan shirts.

‘Wearing a kilt is legal’

Well, it is now. But the thing is, kilts were banned in 1745. After the Scottish rebellion against the British (cough, English), the British Parliament believed that the kilt needed to be banned. These pieces of tartan cloth were a positive threat to the British way of life! Of course, they weren’t worried about Englishmen suddenly abandoning their pants – rather, they thought it made Scotsmen believe that they were different to Englishmen. Of course, the Scots are – in many ways – different to their English counterparts arguably, but not because of the way they dress. Considering the English spent hundreds of years trying to make other countries act, speak, and dress like them, it’s not surprising they banned the kilt really.

‘Kilts are loved by the Scots’

Again, they are now. But prior to the ban in 1745, most Scotsmen couldn’t care less about the kilt – many actually detested them. You see, because kilts had been invented for the lower or working class man, members of the upper class wouldn’t go near them. But after the ban of 1745, everyone wanted to wear one. Thus was born the national costume of Scotland. And after the entire country began flaunting their new attire, each clan claimed they had always been known for their particular tartan. Strangely, none of those chiefs stood up to say ‘Hang on a minute – we only started wearing these yesterday…’

Rather, a scholar called John Pinkerton did. Everyone ignored him, of course, and instead succumbed to reading the romantic tales of Sir Walter Scott. His essay of 1805 actually claimed that different tartans could be traced back to the third century.

But while that may be true, they only graced knee-length shirts.

Tartan Results

The first new feature is the inclusion of tartan results into the regular site search.

Searching our tartan database can be done through the dedicated tartan page. However, the tartan search box is not on every page, and a few people try searching for tartans in the product search box.

To help people find what they’re looking for, we’ve introduced a link before the product results, linking to any tartans which match the keywords you’ve searched for.

For example, if you search for ‘Royal Stewart’, the product search will return all the products with the words ‘royal + stewart’ in them, but now there’s also a link to Royal Stewart tartans right at the top of the page.

More Relevant Results

The second new feature relates solely to product search results. We’ve spent some time working on the relevancy of our search results to make all the results returned, and particularly the first few, more relevant to the search query.

For example, a search for ‘Royal Stewart’ used to return our Diana Memorial tartan rug as the number 1 result. This is a “royal” tartan and pattern is based on the ‘Royal Stewart’ tartan, but it’s not the most relevant result for the search term in question.

The updated search results feature the same items, but the order is tweaked to be more relevant with Royal Stewart tartan products appearing first.

Did You Mean?

The third feature we’ve introduced also relates to product search results. We’ve introduced a ‘did you mean’ feature which attempts to correct mis-spellings in search queries. The good thing about it is that it will only suggest products that are actually in our store so shouldn’t give you non-relevant suggestions.

We’ve also got this feature in our tartan search for tartan mis-spellings.

We noticed that some names contained descriptive identifiers that others didn’t.

For example, our best selling brogue was called ‘Basic Black Ghillie Brogue’. At the moment, all of our brogues are black, but only 2 of 13 pairs featured ‘black’ in the name.

To make choosing your perfect kilt brogues more straight-forward, we felt that the names of the brogues should be more straight-forward.

Our “Basic Black Ghillie Brogues” have been updated to “Basic Ghillie Brogues”, “Standard Dress Ghillie Brogues” have been updated to “Standard Ghillie Brogues” and our “Classic Leather Sole Ghillie Brogues” have been updated to “Classic Ghillie Brogues”.

We hope that these shorter names make it easier to compare our brogues and ultimately help you find the pair for you.

You can see all the new names on our Kilt Brogues page.