Briefs for the Office: The Tailoring Argument
Slim trousers ended the underwear debate years ago. Why briefs are the only correct choice under tailoring, and the three pairs that work hardest from 9 to 5.
What to Wear Under a Kilt
What to wear under a kilt, answered without the innuendo: what the historical record shows, what kiltmakers advise, and why a brief is right for a wedding.
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The question gets asked in a particular tone of voice, usually by someone who thinks they are the first person to have thought of it, and the man in the kilt has heard it four times already that evening. Which is a shame, because underneath the nudge there is a genuinely practical question, and almost nobody gets a useful answer because the conversation collapses into innuendo before it reaches one.
So let us do it properly. You have a wedding in six weeks, you are hiring a kilt or borrowing one, and you would like to know what to do. That is a clothing problem, not a joke.
The short version: most men today wear underwear under a kilt, nearly every hire shop and kiltmaker quietly recommends it, and the correct garment is a well fitting brief. The long version is more interesting, because the history is murkier than the pub will tell you.
What the record actually shows, which is not much
Start with the tradition, because it is the thing everyone thinks they know.
The practice of wearing nothing under the kilt is usually called "going regimental", and the usual account has it descending from the Highland regiments of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as an article of military dress. That account is repeated everywhere. What it is not is well documented. The honest position, and the one the reference works take when they are being careful, is that the origins are simply unknown and the documentary evidence is extremely scarce.
The earliest reference anyone has managed to point to comes from 1815, in French satirical illustrations produced while Paris was under occupation after Waterloo, depicting Scottish soldiers in the small kilt. That is genuinely interesting and genuinely ambiguous. It is not clear whether the practice was a dress requirement, a matter left to the individual soldier, or a rumour the French started for a laugh which later hardened into an actual custom because enough people believed it.
I would not bet against the third.
The story about officers inspecting the ranks with a mirror on a stick is an allegation attached to the First World War rather than a documented order, and it should be treated as such. What is on the record is less romantic and more telling: the kilt was withdrawn from combat use around 1940, on the grounds that bare skin is dangerously vulnerable to chemical agents. Whatever the regiments had been doing, the army stopped needing to have a view on it eighty-odd years ago.
More recently the tradition has had critics inside Scottish dress itself. In 2010 the director of the Scottish Tartans Authority described going regimental as childish and unhygienic, which caused a predictable amount of noise and which is, on the hygiene point at least, difficult to argue with.
None of that makes the tradition fake. Traditions do not need a paper trail to be real. It just means that if someone tells you it is the ancient and correct way and anything else is a betrayal of Scotland, they are stating a preference, not a fact.
What kiltmakers and hire shops actually advise
Ask the people who make and rent the garments and the tone changes completely. There is no wink in it.
Scottish kiltmakers publishing guidance for customers tend to frame it as personal preference and then, having done so, list the reasons to wear something: modesty when dancing or on a windy street, comfort against a wool cloth that can be scratchy, protection for the garment itself, and confidence at a ceilidh.
On hire kilts the advice stops being neutral. Kilt retailers say plainly that most people now wear underwear for hygiene reasons, and for a rental garment the recommendation is unambiguous.
That is the single most useful thing in this entire article, so it gets its own paragraph.
Wear underwear under a hire kilt.
The hire kilt argument, stated plainly
A hired kilt has been worn before, by men you have never met, at weddings and rugby internationals and eighteenth birthday parties, in July, in a marquee. It has been dry cleaned since, and dry cleaning does real work, but a kilt is eight yards of pleated heavy wool and it is not laundered the way a shirt is laundered. It cannot be. Washing a tailored kilt in the ordinary sense would destroy the set of the pleats.
So the garment gets cleaned less aggressively and less often than the number of wearers would suggest it should. Every hire shop in Scotland knows this and would prefer you wore something.
There is a squeamish version of this argument. This is not it. It is the same reasoning that means you wear socks with hired shoes: the interface between a shared garment and your skin should be a garment that is yours, and one you can wash at sixty degrees.
If you own your kilt, made for you, worn by nobody else, the hygiene argument weakens considerably and becomes a question of how often you want the thing cleaned.
Weight, wind and the physics of eight yards of wool
A kilt is a far more substantial object than people who have not worn one imagine.
Kilting cloth is sold by weight per yard. Medium weight runs at around thirteen ounces and suits casual wear and Highland games; heavy weight runs at around sixteen and is what kiltmakers point formal customers towards for weddings and black tie. A traditional kilt takes eight yards. Run that arithmetic loosely and you are wearing several kilogrammes of wool, hung from a strap at your waist, with the mass concentrated in deep pleats at the back.
This matters for three reasons.
It swings. A heavy kilt hangs beautifully because of its momentum, which is the whole point of the sixteen ounce cloth. Momentum also means it moves independently of you when you turn quickly, which is most of what happens at a ceilidh.
It is warm, and then suddenly it is not. Eight yards of wool is a serious insulator in a draughty church. It is also open at the bottom, so the moment you step outside into a Scottish wind, air moves up the inside of the garment with nothing between it and you.
And it sits at the knee, splitting the kneecap when you look straight ahead, which is the standard kiltmakers work to. That is higher than most first-time wearers expect. Combine correct length with a stone stair, a bar stool, and a photographer who wants everyone crouched in the front row, and you have several hours of a garment doing exactly what it was designed to do and offering no coverage whatsoever while it does it.
Sitting down is the moment. Not the wind, not the dancing. Sitting down.
If you wear something, wear a brief
Most men default to whatever is in the drawer, and whatever is in the drawer is usually wrong for this particular garment.
The rule is simple. Nothing with a leg.
A boxer brief has a leg that ends somewhere on the thigh. A kilt ends at the knee. The gap between those two hems is small, and it is the exact zone that becomes visible when you sit, climb, crouch for a photograph or get spun by an enthusiastic aunt during Strip the Willow. A pale grey trunk leg peeping below a dark tartan hem is the commonest failure in Highland dress and it reads as underwear worn wrongly rather than as underwear.
A brief has no leg. There is nothing to appear below a hem because there is no hem to appear below. This is the whole argument and it is unanswerable The Case for Briefs: Why They Should Be Every Man's Default.
Beyond that, a few specifics.
Get the fit right. A brief that rides or bunches under a heavy swinging garment will announce itself all evening. Waistband on the hip without digging, front holding shape rather than gathering, leg openings lying flat How a Brief Should Actually Fit.
Pick a fabric that handles a long warm day. A ceilidh is exercise and a marquee in August is a sauna. Wool cloth against damp cotton is unpleasant, and cotton is slow to recover once wet. Merino is the better answer here, and a fine merino brief under a wool kilt is an oddly satisfying piece of material logic The Best Merino Underwear merino brief.
Watch the chafing. Bare inner thigh against bare inner thigh, for eight hours, with dancing in the middle, is how a good wedding becomes a bad Sunday. If that is a problem you already know about, a brief cut with a slightly deeper side will do more for you than any powder Underwear for Big Thighs: The Chafing Problem Solved seamless microfibre brief.
Avoid a bulky branded waistband. Formal kilts sit high on the natural waist, and a wide elastic band competing with the kilt waistband for the same few centimetres of torso is lumpy under a waistcoat.
Colour, and the one rule anyone has actually written down
There is one written rule in this corner of Scottish dress, and it is sound advice for everyone.
Competitive Highland dancing has a dress code, and on undergarments the Scottish Official Board of Highland Dancing has specified dark, or a colour toning with the kilt, and not white.
Dancers need this rule for obvious reasons: they spend the whole performance in motion at knee height in front of judges. The logic generalises perfectly. Dark tartans are the norm for evening dress, and white under dark wool, in flash photography, at the exact moment somebody attempts a Highland fling, is the one combination guaranteed to be seen clearly.
Navy, charcoal, black, bottle green. Something that disappears rather than something that announces. This is not a judgement on white briefs, which are excellent and have a longer and more dignified history than most people credit The White Brief: A Cultural History. It is a judgement on white briefs at this event, under this garment, in front of this camera.
The rest of the kit below the waist
The part of Highland dress people get wrong second most often, after the underwear.
Kilt hose are proper over-the-calf socks, turned down at the top and held with garter flashes. They are not a costume item; they are the same category of garment as a good business sock, and the ones that stay up are the ones with real ribbing and real elastic through the leg rather than a band at the top The Business Sock: Why Over-the-Calf Is the Professional's Choice.
Cream or off-white is standard for formal wear and is the one place in the outfit where pale is correct. Wool hose in a wool kilt is warmer and better behaved than the acrylic pair that comes with a hire package Wool Socks: The Outdoor Article wool kilt hose. Set the top a hand's width below the kneecap; hose pulled right up to the knee is the commonest hire shop error and it ruins the line of the leg.
What I would actually do
If you are going to a wedding in a hired kilt, wear a dark brief that fits, in merino if you have one and cotton if you do not, and think about it no further. You will be more comfortable, the garment will be cleaner for the next man, and nothing will appear below the hem when the photographer asks the groomsmen to sit on the church steps.
If you own your kilt and you want to wear it regimental, that is a legitimate choice with a genuine, if poorly evidenced, tradition behind it, and the only person it concerns is you. Do not let anybody tell you it is compulsory, and do not tell anybody else it is.
What is worth resisting is the framing. The reason this question gets asked in that voice is that the English-speaking world has spent a century unable to discuss men's underwear without a smirk, the same reflex that drove perfectly good garments to the back of the shop The Locker Room Question: Getting Over the Fear of Being Seen in Briefs.
A kilt is formal national dress with a tailoring tradition and a cloth weight specification. What goes underneath it is a wardrobe decision, like whether you wear a vest under a dress shirt. The answer happens to be a brief. It is not a punchline Under the Suit: What to Wear on Your Wedding Day.
Questions people ask
Do Scotsmen really wear nothing under a kilt?
Some do, most do not. The tradition of "going regimental" is real in the sense that people practise it, but its origins are poorly documented, the earliest known reference being French satirical prints from 1815. Kiltmakers and hire shops today generally advise wearing underwear, particularly with a hired garment, and it is now the majority choice. Anyone insisting that going without is the only correct way is expressing a preference, not citing a rule.
What underwear should I wear under a kilt to a wedding?
A well fitting brief in a dark colour. The critical point is that it should have no leg, because any hem that ends on the thigh will show below the kilt when you sit, crouch for a photograph or dance. Choose navy, charcoal or black rather than white, which shows through and photographs badly against dark tartan. Merino handles a long warm day better than cotton, which stays damp once you have danced in it.
Should I wear underwear with a hire kilt?
Yes. A hired kilt has been worn by many people before you, and because a tailored kilt cannot be laundered like a shirt without ruining the pleating, it is cleaned less thoroughly and less often than the number of wearers would suggest. Hire shops and kiltmakers recommend underwear with rental garments for exactly this reason. Treat it the same way you treat socks with hired shoes.
Why should I not wear boxer briefs under a kilt?
Because a boxer brief has a leg that ends on the thigh, and a kilt ends at the knee. The distance between the two hems is short, and any movement that lifts the kilt, sitting down, climbing stairs, dancing, crouching for a group photograph, brings the underwear hem into view. It reads as a mistake rather than as a choice. A brief has no leg and therefore nothing that can appear.
Is it unhygienic to go regimental?
It is a real consideration, particularly with a hired or shared garment. In 2010 the director of the Scottish Tartans Authority publicly described the practice as childish and unhygienic, and while that provoked plenty of argument, the point about rental kilts is hard to dispute. With a kilt you own and have cleaned regularly the concern is much smaller, and comes down to how often you are prepared to have the garment seen to.