A Man in a Kilt
The stories that bring us home
Featuring Brodie Good
There is a particular kind of homecoming that cannot be measured in miles. It is not marked by the journey itself, nor by the moment you unpack your belongings and settle once again into familiar surroundings. Rather, it reveals itself quietly—in the places that remain unchanged, in the people waiting for you, and in the parts of yourself that somehow never left.
For Brodie Good, Scotland has always been that place.
For five years, he lived and worked in London, building the kind of career many ambitious young professionals aspire to in their twenties. Like so many young Scots before him, he left home to discover what lay beyond it—to learn, to grow, and to experience life beyond the familiar landscape of East Lothian. Yet beneath every new chapter was the quiet certainty that Scotland remained where his story began.
When asked what being Scottish means to him, his answer was neither romantic nor patriotic. Instead, it was something far more universal.
"Being Scottish, for me, is largely about a sense of belonging."
Perhaps that is why some places never truly leave us.
Home, after all, is rarely just geography.
It is memory. It is family. It is knowing that no matter how far life carries us, there are certain landscapes that continue to call us back.
For Brodie, Scotland has always been one of them.
Growing up in East Lothian, just outside Edinburgh, afforded him something that is becoming increasingly rare—a childhood defined by freedom, community, and an enduring connection to the landscape around him. Golf courses stretch endlessly across the coastline, beaches remain only minutes away, and life moves at a gentler pace than in many of the world's great cities.
He speaks warmly of his family, of growing up surrounded by people who valued togetherness above all else, and of returning home for birthdays, Christmases, and life's important moments regardless of where family members might find themselves in the world.
There is another place that occupies a special corner of his memory—the North West Highlands of Scotland.
Glenelg.
A place he describes as though time itself had simply forgotten to continue. A place where visitors arrive expecting one version of Scotland and discover something entirely different. He laughs when recalling the reactions of friends seeing its beauty for the very first time—wondering why anyone would board a plane when places like this exist only a drive away.
And perhaps therein lies something quintessentially Scottish. Scotland is not simply inherited by those born here. It is continually rediscovered by those who return to it.
Leaving home proved equally formative.
Before London came Nicaragua—a world away from the familiarity of Scottish life. What began as volunteering work became an education in independence, gratitude, and perspective. Sleeping beneath mosquito nets in remote villages and attempting to explain what an aeroplane was to someone who had never seen one profoundly shifted his understanding of the world and his place within it.
Like so many meaningful experiences, it was not necessarily comfortable at the time.
Growth rarely is.
"You gain more value from putting yourself outside your comfort zone because you don't know what's possible on the other side of your day-to-day comforts."
Those words would come to shape not only his experiences abroad, but his understanding of returning home itself.
London followed university—a city defined by movement, ambition, and endless opportunity. Five years passed building a professional life, friendships, and embracing the rhythm of adulthood. Yet Scotland was never absent from the story.
Home was always waiting quietly in the background.
"When you move away from Scotland, you always want to move back to Scotland."
He speaks of Scotland not with nostalgia, but with calm certainty. There was never a singular moment that prompted his return. Rather, it was a collection of smaller moments—a ten-minute drive to a golf club becoming a ninety-minute train journey, familiar beaches replaced by crowded platforms, and the gradual realisation that home offers something increasingly difficult to define in modern life.
Stillness.
"When you come home, it's like a reset."
The Portrait Session
The portraits created for A Man in a Kilt were conceived not as three outfits, but as three chapters of a life story.
The Professional.
The Heritage.
The Homecoming.
Photographed within Angelique Portrait Photography's private portrait studio in East Lothian, each chapter was intentionally created as a fine-art study of identity. Inspired by the enduring elegance of classical portraiture, the hand-painted canvas backdrops quietly echo the timeless quality of old master paintings—allowing both story and subject to remain at the centre of every frame.
The question at the heart of the project was never simply what does Brodie do?
Rather, it was:
Who is he when the titles are set aside?
CHAPTER ONE
The Professional
London
The first portrait presents the version of Brodie many young professionals might recognise.
The business suit represents ambition, opportunity, and growth. London provided each in abundance. It was where adulthood truly began—a chapter defined by challenge, independence, and discovering who he might become beyond the familiarity of home.
Yet living elsewhere also revealed something unexpected.
The further we travel, the more clearly we sometimes see where we belong.
The Professional — The life he built. Five years in London offered growth, perspective, and the confidence that comes from stepping beyond familiarity.
CHAPTER TWO
The Heritage
The Kilt
There are few garments in the world so immediately associated with heritage as the Scottish kilt.
Yet for Brodie, it has never been a costume.
The first time he wore one, he was two years old. Family photographs remain framed within his childhood home—a small boy wrapped in tartan long before he could understand its significance. Today, that same tartan continues to connect generations of his family across time.
"There's a lovely thread that runs through a kilt—not just in a design sense, but also that lineage that's always been part of your family."
Perhaps this is why the kilt continues to endure in modern Scotland.
It is not simply tradition preserved for special occasions. It is a story made tangible. It is memory worn across generations. It is belonging stitched carefully into cloth.
And occasionally, it is sitting uncomfortably upon cold wooden church benches during Scottish winters—a memory Brodie recalls with considerable amusement.
There is humour woven throughout Scottish identity, too.
The misconceptions remain wonderfully persistent—that every Scot owns bagpipes, that everyone knows everyone else, or that haggis is perhaps still running freely through Highland fields somewhere. Scotland wears its stereotypes lightly, often preferring laughter over correction.
Yet beneath the humour remains something enduring.
"It's a cultural piece that ties together not just my generation, but my mum and dad's generation and generations before that."
The Kilt — Not a costume, but continuity.
CHAPTER THREE
The Home-coming
Golf and the Future
If the first portrait speaks of ambition, and the second of inheritance, then the third speaks quietly of coming home.
Today, Brodie has exchanged London's boardrooms for the fairways of East Lothian—returning not only to Scotland, but to the game that first captured his imagination as a child.
Golf has always been part of the landscape here.
East Lothian is affectionately known as Scotland's Golf Coast, where courses seem almost as plentiful as lampposts. For Brodie, returning home meant returning to that lifelong passion.
Today, he works with Wee Wonders Golf in Gullane, helping shape the next generation of young golfers while remaining deeply connected to both the game and the community that first inspired him.
There is something fitting about that.
Having spent years discovering the wider world, he now finds himself helping others begin their own journeys.
When asked what advice he would offer his younger self, his answer feels equally relevant to all of us.
"Don't be afraid to go out and try new things. There's a big world out there."
And yet, perhaps his story reminds us of something equally important.
Sometimes, discovering who we are requires leaving home.
And sometimes, it requires returning.
The Homecoming — Not the man who left, but the man he became by finding his way back.
Final Reflection
There is a temptation when speaking of heritage to place it entirely in the past—to imagine it belongs solely to history books, family trees, and traditions preserved behind glass.
Brodie's story offers something altogether quieter than that.
Heritage, it seems, is not something we inherit once.
It is something we continue to live.
The suit speaks of who he became. The kilt reminds him where he came from. The final portrait reveals something perhaps more important still—that home is not necessarily the place we begin, but often the place that patiently waits for our return.
And when asked what he is most grateful for today, his answer returns once more to Scotland, family, and belonging.
"What an amazing childhood, getting to grow up here. What an amazing prospect it is to come back and live here, at any stage of life."
Perhaps that is what A Man in a Kilt has always been about.
Not simply Scottish heritage.
Not simply portraiture.
But the enduring pull of home.
