Anna Burnside: Tartan without the tat Can a more sophisticated Scotland Week in New York revive former glories and spare our blushes, asks Anna Burnside THE Liberty Theatre, a beaux-arts marvel on Times Square, has seen it all. Fred Astaire. George Gershwin. Cole Porter. And tomorrow night, a fashion show before an audience of expats, Scottish celebrities and people with extremely tenuous Celtic connections. They will be wearing elaborate kilts, tartan sashes and breeks that Rupert the Bear might consider a bit loud. On the stage, real Scots that people have heard of - Darren Fletcher, Sir Tom Hunter, Lord McConnell - will be joined by Miss Scotland, a couple of Welsh actors, Mr Big from Sex And The City and the guy about to sell Mashable for £128m. The event, From Scotland With Love, marks the start of Scotland Week, the seven days in which North Americans are urged to celebrate their Scottish roots, however straggly. It culminates in Tartan Day on Saturday when Manhattan's 6th Avenue becomes a whirling mass of pipes, drums and frilly-bloused dancers. And while the week's aims are serious and commendable - promoting Scottish tourism, culture, fashion and whisky in a territory with a ready-made diaspora market - the fashion show in particular has become associated with former First Minister Jack McConnell in a toe-curling pin-striped kilt, Gerard Butler brandishing a broadsword, tartan micro-minis and Harris Tweed evening gowns. This year, the organisers hope, will be different. Losing the old name - Dressed to Kilt - and swapping Tartan Week for Scotland Week is all about putting a more sophisticated gloss on what has been, in the past, a heavily Bravehearted occasion. "Like anything related to Scotland or Ireland, the more stereotypical the better in the US," says Aaron Hicklin, a former Scotland on Sunday journalist now editing a magazine in New York. That said, Dressed to Kilt was pretty successful in knitting old school with hip. It's also a marketing opportunity for the big whisky brands to get wine and spirits writers to wear kilts for an evening. Iona Crawford, whose elegant silk dresses stood out in last year's sea of lurid tartan, has been in New York since Friday preparing for the show. I have an entire slot of my own on the catwalk. The venue is beautiful, the recently restored Liberty Theatre. The show has been entirely made over to take on a far more high end, haute couture, grown-up persona; far more suited to my brand. Crawford, who is currently producing a bed linen collection with American firm Rio Home Fashions, will also be using From Scotland With Love as a networking opportunity. With my US agent based in New York, I will also be attending meetings, liaising and doing some business. Many of my current partners are attending the show. The fashion show is payrolled by Sir Tom Hunter, with all profits going to Cash for Kids and American charity The Wounded Warrior Project. The Scottish Government, previously a generous funder, is focusing its support on Re:Designed, an event at the end of Scotland Week, where 12 established textile and fashion brands will stage a high-end trade fare. Exhibitors range from Bebaroque's out-there tights and William Chambers" avant-garde hats to interior designers Timorous Beasties and cashmere queen Belinda Robertson. It's not all about the frocks: Scotland Week also includes a 10km run in Central Park and a chance to see David Harrower's moving play A Slow Air. The Lewis chessmen are going on show, there is a memorial lecture on the life and times of Andrew Carnegie and, for the under-80s, Glasgow band Song of Return are playing two shows. For the finale, on Tartan Day itself, Dundonian actor Brian Cox will lead the parade. It's not yet St Patrick's day - which has been celebrated in New York for the past 248 years and turns the city green - but, slowly, the day that North American Scots can call their own is evolving into a cogent, user-friendly format. It was first mooted by New York governor Hugh Carey and mayor Ed Koch in 1982. In conjunction with the city's Caledonian Club they declared July 1 Tartan Day, to commemorate the repeal of the Act of Proscription, banning the wearing of the kilt, in 1747. What's the point in having a 235th anniversary if you can't celebrate it? That was a one-off that failed to stick but, four years later, the Canadians alighted on April 6 and rolled the party out over a week. The US happily adopted their date and, in 1998, made it official. The Senate passed a resolution, George W Bush signed a presidential proclamation and politicians all over Scotland began consulting travel agents and monitoring the exchange rate. The first event, in 1999, was a stroll rather than a parade, a group of expats starting at the British Consulate and heading for the United Nations accompanied by two pipe bands. It moved to 6th Avenue in 2002, with Sir Sean Connery marching at its head. From home soil, however, Tartan Day felt like a badge of honour for a newly devolved country. Jack McConnell's terrible kilt may have haunted his political career but the sight of him marching up Sixth Avenue beside Sean Connery, beaming fit to burst, said it all. This is what all the hard work was for. He felt that he had finally hit the big time. One journalist who went to New York for Tartan Week in 2000 recalls the excitement these early events generated. I hadn't really noticed it was happening this year. It feels like a dusty hula hoop resting on a pile of Osmonds LPs compared with the presence it had then. In truth, the reality failed to live up to the hype. There was all this fuss and then it was basically a trade event. There were lots of cut glass Scottish paperweights being given away, and terrible pop groups. He recalls many lavish corporate parties, including "a huge bash in the New York Public Library sponsored by one of the many whisky liqueurs which came and went throughout that period. But it was basically naff and sad: Dr Finlay's Casebook goes on holiday. This year's organisers have their sporrans crossed that Dr Finlay's ghost will be laid to rest and the make-up artists will give the blue face paint a rest. By the time the fashion show is finished, they promise, "you will again feel proud to be Scottish. If you are not Scottish, you will wish that you were. Big words. Let's hope they don't come back to bite them.