Kilt Up Gentlemen!

Kilt up Gentlemen!

I suppose none of you are surprized that this story caught me wee bittie eye?



Ma Yappy

Just don't call it a skirt!

By Ann Marie McQueen




Utilikilts founder Steven Villegas sewed up his first utility kilt eight years ago. (Sean Kilpatrick, Sun Media)
Just don't call it a skirt. Those who wear a kilt say there is nothing more masculine. Especially when it comes in denim or camouflage, with snaps, straps, cargo pockets and even a tool belt.

Statistics Canada worker Todd Chambers ordered his first Utilikilt six years ago. Now he has a half-dozen of them and wears one to his Ottawa office every day, donning leg warmers when temperatures drop. "I found them so comfortable," he says, "I basically eschewed the use of pants ever since."

Paul Henry, who also works for the federal government, doesn't go that far. His weekends however, are unencumbered. "Once you've gotten over the difference of wearing it," he said. "It's very liberating."

Utilikilts founder Steven Villegas sewed up his first utility kilt eight years ago when he decided shorts weren't cutting it. "They're kinda binding," he said. Enter one of his company's macho mottos: "We sell freedom."


The then-motorcycle refurbisher got a major positive reaction from both sexes. So he got to work. He sold 750 Utilikilts the first year, jumping to 15,000 in 2006. Canada is Utilikilts' second biggest international market, behind the U.K.

The idea has spawned competitors, two of them Canadian. Robert Pel, an opera company stage manager, bought a traditional kilt back in 2000 and loved it.

Then he read about Utilikilts. "I went, 'Oh geez, I could wear a kilt every day,'" he said. "So I made a kilt I could wear while working at the opera."

People loved his black denim kilt so much they started asking for their own.

Leather and Hemp:


Now Pel is putting out about 5,300 a year from his Stratford, Ont.,-based R Kilts -- some fashioned from leather and hemp -- to as far away as Korea and Tasmania.

Steve Ashton, an engineer and owner/founder of Victoria-based Freedom Kilts, sewed up his first "contemporary kilt" four years ago, and has doubled his business every year since. "They are so comfortable, they are just incredibly fun to wear," he explains, adding, "you ladies of the female persuasion love to watch us in our kilts."

Jane Boyko, Henry's wife, agrees: "It's eye candy to me." Just don't expect man-in-kilt to give a straight answer about what's underneath.

"My boots," is Chambers' typical response. It takes a certain guy to wear a kilt, says Villegas: Confident, secure and at peace with his sexuality.

"We're all about be who you are, and be who you are now," he says.

Yet all future kilt-wearers face the same fear when they get ready to walk out the door in a kilt for the very first time, says Ashton. "Oh, somebody's going to laugh at me. My friends are going to think I'm a cross-dresser," he said. "Until you see the power of the kilt."

http://lifewise.canoe.ca/Style/Trend...69178-sun.html