The New York Times has issued a hilarious apology over its misidentification of the traditional Scottish attire worn at the weekend’s Emmys by Scottish award winners Alan Cumming and Richard Gadd.
Cumming, the flamboyant host of the US version of reality show The Traitors, picked up the Emmy for best reality competition program, while Gadd scooped a sackful of prizes for his Netflix hit Baby Reindeer.
Both men collected their awards wearing some degree of traditional Scottish dress, including kilts and tartan. The paper’s highlights coverage, however, displayed an embarrassing lack of cultural awareness from the fashion team.
The paper was full of praise for the kilt trend, nominating it as the night’s ‘Best Fashion Choice.’ In Gadd’s case the kilt was, according to the original copy “accessorized with a black fanny pack over black tights.” Seemingly intent on digging deeper, the story added that “He’ll need a bigger fanny pack to carry all that hardware home.”
A correction has since been added, noting: “An earlier version of this article misidentified an accessory worn by Richard Gadd. It was a sporran, a pouch traditionally worn with a kilt, not a fanny pack.”
For what it’s worth, should the NYT’s subs be reading, from the pictures we’ve seen we’re fairly sure Gadd was wearing socks rather than tights, but two nations divided by a common language and all that.
