Julia Gordon, now 80, lives in Inverness, where she edited The Tartan Skirt from 1999 to 2001, producing a 12-copy run of the magazine. The Tartan Skirt was a magazine produced for and by the T community, with the first run produced by Anne Forester in Aberdeenshire and the second run by Julia in Inverness. All issues of the Tartan Skirt have been digitised and are open access through the Digital Transgender Archive. This article was produced from excerpts from an interview with Julia on September 5th 2026 by Poppy Watson, who is working on documenting LGBTQ+ history of the Scottish Highlands.
Poppy
Fabulous, let’s get started. The first question is: what is/ was the Tartan Skirt?
Julia
It was an idea I had to try to improve the lot, if you like, for trans folk, particularly in Inverness and Highland but more generally around Scotland. I saw it as a vehicle to make connections between trans folk all over Scotland, because there were none or very few – certainly room for improvement.
So, the Tartan Skirt had been in existence as a wee A5 magazine that Anne Forrester had produced for a few years until she became so ill she couldn’t do it anymore, and then it had lain dormant for a while. So while I was volunteering with Reach Out Highland [1] and facilitating the T-group [2], it occurred to me that [the] Tartan Skirt could be a useful thing to, as I say, improve the lot of T folk. I spoke to Andrew Hunter, the manager of Reach Out Highland at the time, and he was very supportive, very enthusiastic, and offered all the back office services I would need. In fact, it went to the extent of paying for a dedicated computer and printer.
I don’t know where I got the skills from to actually get the project off the ground, but I think it was a work in progress and I’d learned a lot from Anne Forrester’s little magazine, so I wasn’t starting from scratch.
Poppy
Am I right in thinking your role was as the editor?
Julia
I did the lot. Oh dear, oh dear…….Well, when it came to producing it, yeah, it was down to me to create the layout, to print it all, to staple it all, trim it all and send it all out. But I was so dependent on others for the content. I put the odd article in myself, and there was a regular contribution from Andrew as well, but I made it known that this was going to happen and I was looking for contributions. But yeah, I was good at badgering folk, and I got a lot of help locally from my friend, Aileen. She used to do the cartoons.
So, I’ve got the Tartan Skirt kind of laid out initially, and it seemed like a good idea to try and get other organisations involved and interested in supporting the Tartan Skirt. We did this by getting [organisations to take out] adverts, and some actually even paid for advertising. It still amazes me to this day.
Poppy
Aye, you had Scots Gay in most of them; I remember noticing that.
Julia
Yep, oh aye. And of course, there was a number of trans-specific organisations, mostly down south. But they were happy to offer their services through their adverts in the Tartan Skirt as well. I suppose it was actually rubbing up against these other organisations in the sexual minorities section of society, which hadn’t really [been] done before. But through the Tartan Skirt, I was finding myself doing this.
And it occurred to me that, particularly the gay movement at that point were shouting the loudest and they seemed to be making waves, arguably making some progress in equality issues. I was very envious. So, it occurred to me that if we could only piggyback on the gay rights movement, that would be beneficial to us. So with the support, financial support, I have to say, of Reach Out Highland, I was up and down to the Central Belt. Like I say, rubbing shoulders with the movers and shakers [of] the gay rights movement and tried to be political about how it would benefit everybody if we didn’t leave anybody behind, like T folk. Eventually we all kind of came together.
So there were various layers to the Tartan Skirt magazine, not least the fact that it was very creative. That ticked the box for me, more than anything else. I really enjoyed producing the Tartan Skirt.
Poppy
Did you send the magazines all over Scotland or further? I saw that you had a wee bit if you wanted it posted internationally as well.
Julia
I think one or two went to the States. There was one or two [that] went down south as well, but mostly around Scotland.
Poppy
How many were you kind of sending out?
Julia
If I remember correctly, it was 40 odds at its peak. Which was towards the end, because towards the end, the internet was coming in. It was taking over.
Yeah, Vicky’s web watch.[3] Vicky was a local member of the community here, and Vicky was into computers, digital stuff, and she had a wee feature in [the Tartan Skirt]. That was just at the point where it [the internet] was coming in. Not many people used the internet, it wasn’t readily available at that point. What happened was that the interest in the Tartan Skirt shifted because on the internet, people could access information immediately and it didn’t cost them. I suspect that the internet put an end to the Tartan Skirt.
Oh, oh, wait a minute, though, there was another [thing]. Yeah, these things are never simple, never black and white. There was a change in management at reached out to Highland too and the back office services [that] were made available [for free] were now being told we had to pay for them.
Poppy
Oh
Julia
Yeah. So, in an effort to do that, the price of the Tartan Skirt went up. I think that started to put people off. It became economically unviable, so there was several things going on at the end
Poppy
Do you have any favorite memories or anything that like sticks out from your time making the Tartan Skirt?
Julia
Oh, and I’ll tell you, [the] sleepless nights and the hair pulling I had trying to get my head around this software. We used this software and my photoshop skills as I was the photoshopper and Aileen was the brains of the cartoons, if you like. She was good at drawing, she drew the cartoons, but she could only draw them roughly in pencil. So we had to convert these [and] digitise them, colour them in and all. So, we’d sit at the computer and put our brains together and come up with a cartoon, and it was a hoot. We had that kind of synergy, we really love to laugh at life. Well, I think very often if you’re transgender, if you didn’t laugh, you’d cry. But these were happy times.
Poppy
Little side question, actually, that I didn’t write down, but I’ve just had a thought about it. Who created the caption contests? And did you get to pick which one you went for? Because I loved reading them all.
Julia
I think it was myself. I mean, I was just pinching ideas from other magazines. There’s nothing original in life. So yeah, the caption competition, I always felt a slight disappointment [that] I didn’t get more, because I wanted a laugh.
Poppy
We talked a wee bit about the purpose of the Tartan Skirt, which at the time was to create connection, but what do you think its purpose is now? Not that it necessarily needs to have a purpose…
Julia
Yeah, well, if it has a purpose now, it serves to inform people where they’re coming from. Part of the journey that they’ve been on, maybe not personally, not now, because time has passed, but in a broader sense. Because if you don’t know where you’re coming from, you don’t know what you’re doing. I think it provided a signpost along the way.
Poppy
Absolutely. It’s also a wee snapshot in time of what was going on.
Was there anything from Anne’s Tartan Skirt that you wanted to continue over like any sections or themes or things?
Julia
I’m sure I continued stuff. The general impression I’m left with from Anne’s Tartan Skirt was that the focus was on how to show up as female. That’s my sense. There were articles on makeup, dress sense, things like that. But what there wasn’t was a lot of the internal, if you like, makeup for the internal. What does it mean to be transgender? What does it mean for you? Where do you go with that? How do you figure it out? That was more my focus.
[1] Reach Out Highland was a charity that operated in Inverness, focused on sexual health and facilitating a number of LGBTQ+ initiatives/groups.
[2] The T-group was a social group for the transgender community in Inverness, which Julia ran for a number of years.
[3] Vicky’s Web Watch was a regular section in the Tartan Skirt all about the internet, what it is and how to use it
