A pleat (plait in older English) is a type of fold formed by doubling

fabric Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, different fabric types, etc. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is not the ...

back upon itself and securing it in place. It is commonly used in

clothing Clothing (also known as clothes, apparel, and attire) are items worn on the body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin sheets of materials and natural ...

and

upholstery Upholstery is the work of providing furniture, especially seats, with padding, springs, webbing, and fabric or leather covers. The word also refers to the materials used to upholster something. ''Upholstery'' comes from the Middle English w ...

to gather a wide piece of fabric to a narrower circumference. Pleats are categorized as ''pressed'', that is, ironed or otherwise heat-set into a sharp crease, or ''unpressed'', falling in soft rounded folds. Pleats sewn into place are called tucks.

Types

Accordion

Accordion pleats or knife pleats are a form of tight pleating which allows the garment to expand its shape when moving. Accordion pleating is also used for some dress sleeves, such as pleating the end of the elbow, with the fullness of the pleat gathered closely at the cuff. This form of pleating inspired the "skirt dancing" of

Loie Fuller Loie Fuller (born Marie Louise Fuller; January 15, 1862 – January 1, 1928), also known as Louie Fuller and Loïe Fuller, was an American actress and dancer who was a pioneer of both modern dance and theatrical lighting techniques. Career Born ...

. Accordion pleats may also be used in hand fans.

Box

Box pleats are knife pleats back-to-back, and have a tendency to spring out from the waistline.Picken, Mary Brooks, ''The Fashion Dictionary'', p. 257 They have the same 3:1 ratio as knife pleats, and may also be stacked to form "stacked-" or "double-box pleats". These stacked box pleats create more fullness and have a 5:1 ratio. They also create a bulkier seam. Inverted box pleats have the "box" on the inside rather than the outside.

Cartridge

Cartridge pleats are used to gather a large amount of fabric into a small waistband or armscye without adding bulk to the seam. This type of pleating also allows the fabric of the skirt or sleeve to spring out from the seam. During the 15th and 16th centuries, this form of pleating was popular in the garments of men and women. Fabric is evenly gathered using two or more lengths of basting stitches, and the top of each pleat is whipstitched onto the waistband or armscye. Cartridge pleating was resurrected in 1840s fashion to attach the increasingly full bell-shaped skirts to the fashionable narrow waist.

Fluted

Fluted pleats or "flutings" are very small, rounded or pressed pleats used as trimmings. The name comes from their resemblance to a

pan flute A pan flute (also known as panpipes or syrinx) is a musical instrument based on the principle of the closed tube, consisting of multiple pipes of gradually increasing length (and occasionally girth). Multiple varieties of pan flutes have been ...

Fortuny

Fortuny pleats are crisp pleats set in silk fabrics by designer Mariano Fortuny in the early 20th century, using a secret pleat-setting process which is still not understood.

Honeycomb

Honeycomb pleats are narrow, rolled pleats used as a foundation for

smocking Smocking is an embroidery technique used to gather fabric so that it can stretch. Before elastic, smocking was commonly used in cuffs, bodices, and necklines in garments where buttons were undesirable. Smocking developed in England and has been ...

Kick

Kick pleats are short pleats leading upwards from the bottom hem of garments such as skirts or coats, usually at the back. They allow the garment to drape straight down when stationary while also allowing freedom of movement.

Kingussie

Kingussie pleats, named after the town in Scotland, are a very rarely seen type of pleat used in some Scottish

kilt A kilt ( gd, fèileadh ; Irish: ''féileadh'') is a garment resembling a wrap-around knee-length skirt, made of twill woven worsted wool with heavy pleats at the sides and back and traditionally a tartan pattern. Originating in the Scottish Hi ...

s. They consist of a single centrally located box pleat in the rear of the kilt with knife pleats fanning out on either side.

Knife

Knife pleats are used for basic gathering purposes, and form a smooth line rather than springing away from the seam they have been gathered to. The pleats have a 3:1 ratio–three inches of fabric will create one inch of finished pleat. Knife pleats can be recognized by the way that they overlap in the seam.

Organ

Organ pleats are parallel rows of softly rounded pleats resembling the pipes of a

pipe organ The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air (called ''wind'') through the organ pipes selected from a keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ''ranks ...

. Carl Köhler suggests that these are made by inserting one or more gores into a panel of fabric.

Plissé

Plissé pleats are narrow pleats made by gathering fabric with stitches, wetting the fabric, and "setting" the pleats by allowing the wet fabric to dry under weight or tension.

Linen Linen () is a textile made from the fibers of the flax plant. Linen is very strong, absorbent, and dries faster than cotton. Because of these properties, linen is comfortable to wear in hot weather and is valued for use in garments. It also ...

chemises or smocks pleated with this technique have been found in the tenth century

Viking Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...

graves in

Birka Birka (''Birca'' in medieval sources), on the island of Björkö (lit. "Birch Island") in present-day Sweden, was an important Viking Age trading center which handled goods from Scandinavia as well as many parts of the European continent and ...

Rolled

Rolled pleats create tubular pleats which run the length of the fabric from top to bottom. A piece of the fabric to be pleated is pinched and then rolled until it is flat against the rest of the fabric, forming a tube. A variation on the rolled pleat is the stacked pleat, which is rolled similarly and requires at least five inches of fabric per finished pleat. Both types of pleating create a bulky seam.

Watteau

Watteau pleats are one or two box pleats found at the back neckline of

18th century The 18th century lasted from January 1, 1701 ( MDCCI) to December 31, 1800 ( MDCCC). During the 18th century, elements of Enlightenment thinking culminated in the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions. During the century, slave trad ...

sack-back gown __NOTOC__ The sack-back gown or ''robe à la française'' was a women's fashion of 18th century Europe. At the beginning of the century, the sack-back gown was a very informal style of dress. At its most informal, it was unfitted both front and ba ...

s and some late

19th century The 19th (nineteenth) century began on 1 January 1801 ( MDCCCI), and ended on 31 December 1900 ( MCM). The 19th century was the ninth century of the 2nd millennium. The 19th century was characterized by vast social upheaval. Slavery was abolis ...

tea gown A tea gown or tea-gown is a woman's dress for informal entertaining at home. These dresses, which became popular around the mid-19th century, are characterized by unstructured lines and light fabrics. Early tea gowns were a European development in ...

s in imitation of these. The term is not contemporary, but is used by costume historians in reference to these styles as portrayed in the paintings of

Antoine Watteau Jean-Antoine Watteau (, , ; baptised October 10, 1684died July 18, 1721) Alsavailablevia Oxford Art Online (subscription needed). was a French painter and draughtsman whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in colour and movement, a ...

. File:Knife pleat.jpg, The knife pleat is the basic pleat used in sewing. File:Pleats with seam.jpg, Knife pleats with the construction and seam stitches shown. File:Box pleats 1.jpg, Box pleats for a skirt.

Modern usage

Clothing features pleats for practical reasons (to provide freedom of movement to the wearer) as well as for purely stylistic reasons.

Shirts, blouses, jackets

Tekkoshocon 2010 cosplayer with Mahora Academy Middle School for Girls winter uniform from Negima

Shirts and blouses typically have pleats on the back to provide freedom of movement and on the arm where the sleeve tapers to meet the cuff. The standard men's shirt has a box pleat in the center of the back just below the shoulder or alternately one simple pleat on each side of the back. Jackets designed for active outdoor wear frequently have pleats (usually inverted box pleats) to allow for freedom of movement.

Norfolk jacket A Norfolk jacket is a loose, belted, single-breasted tweed jacket with box pleats on the back and front, with a belt or half-belt. It was originally designed as a shooting coat that did not bind when the elbow was raised to fire. Its origin is un ...

s have double-ended inverted box pleats at the chest and back.

Skirts and kilts

Skirts A skirt is the lower part of a dress or a separate outer garment that covers a person from the waist downwards. At its simplest, a skirt can be a draped garment made out of a single piece of fabric (such as pareos). However, most skirts are ...

dresses A dress (also known as a frock or a gown) is a garment traditionally worn by women or girls consisting of a skirt with an attached bodice (or a matching bodice giving the effect of a one-piece garment). It consists of a top piece that covers ...

and

s can include pleats of various sorts to add fullness from the waist or hips, or at the hem, to allow freedom of movement or achieve design effects. * One or more kick pleats may be set near the hem of a straight skirt to allow the wearer to walk comfortably while preserving the narrow style line. * Modern kilts may be made with either box pleats or knife pleats, and can be ''pleated to the stripe'' or ''pleated to the sett'' (see main article Kilts: Pleating and stitching).

Trousers

Pleats just below the waistband on the front of the garment are typical of many styles of formal and casual

trousers Trousers (British English), slacks, or pants are an item of clothing worn from the waist to anywhere between the knees and the ankles, covering both legs separately (rather than with cloth extending across both legs as in robes, skirts, and dr ...

including suit trousers and khakis. There may be one, two, three, or no pleats, which may face either direction. When the pleats open towards the pockets they are called reverse pleats (typical of khakis and corduroy trousers) and when they open toward the zipper, they are known as forward pleats. Utilitarian or very casual styles such as

jeans Jeans are a type of pants or trousers made from denim or dungaree cloth. Often the term "jeans" refers to a particular style of trousers, called "blue jeans", with copper-riveted pockets which were invented by Jacob W. Davis in 1871 and paten ...

and

cargo pants Cargo pants or cargo trousers, also sometimes called combat pants or combat trousers after their original purpose as military workwear, are loosely cut pants originally designed for rough work environments and outdoor activities, distinguished b ...

are flat-front (without pleats at the waistband) but may have bellows pockets. Pleated trousers were popular before World War II; fabric rationing during the war precluded the style, and flat front became the standard by necessity of cloth shortages.Pleated pants, especially of the double reverse pleat variety, were commonplace in the 1980s and 1990s, but by the late 2000s they had fallen out of favour.

Pockets

A bellows pocket is patch pocket with an inset box pleat to allow the pocket to expand when filled. Bellows pockets are typical of cargo pants,

safari jacket A safari jacket or bush jacket also known as a “shacket” is a garment originally designed for the purpose of going on safari in the African bush. When paired with trousers or shorts, it becomes a safari suit. A safari jacket is commonly a lig ...

s, and other utilitarian garments.

Pleated blinds

The

pleated blinds A pleat (plait in older English) is a type of fold formed by doubling fabric back upon itself and securing it in place. It is commonly used in clothing and upholstery to gather a wide piece of fabric to a narrower circumference. Pleats are cat ...

are curtains made of a dense fabric that folds up in an accordion when lifted. The model was developed in Germany in the middle of the XX century. Today pleated blinds are popular all over the world due to their functionality, variety of design and effective protection from sunlight.

Gallery

Image:Fan, Japanese.png, 1 – Sunray pleats Image:GrandsMagasinDuLaSamaritaineSaionDEte1886page21 detail 1.jpg, 2 – Box pleats Image:Conde nast fortuny.jpg, 3 – Fortuny pleats Image:Highland Dance 002.jpg, 4 – Knife pleats Image:Antonello da Messina 060.jpg, 5 – Organ pleats Image:Wiktor Elpidiforowitsch Borissow-Mussatow 002.jpg, 6 – Watteau pleats Image:Evzonen.jpg, 7 – Fine boxed pleats #

Woodblock print Woodblock printing or block printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. Each page or image is create ...

of sunray pleated folding fan, Japan, 19th century # Afternoon costume with box pleated skirt and unpressed box pleated bodice panel, France, 1886 # Fortuny pleated Delphos gown, 1917 # Knife-pleated kilt with pleats sewn down to the hip line, 2005 # Organ pleated gown, Florentine, 1470 # Tea gowns with Watteau-pleated backs, Russia, 1899 # Greek Fustanella - men's garb with pleats

References

Sources

* Arnold, Janet: ''Patterns of Fashion: the cut and construction of clothes for men and women 1560–1620'', Macmillan 1985. Revised edition 1986. * Arnold, Janet: ''Patterns of Fashion 1 (cut and construction of women's clothing, 1660–1860)'', Wace 1964, Macmillan 1972. Revised metric edition, Drama Books 1977. . * Kohler, Carl: ''A History of Costume'', Dover Publications reprint, 1963, * Owen-Crocker, Gale R., ''Dress in Anglo-Saxon England''revised edition, Boydell Press, 2004, * Picken, Mary Brooks, ''The Fashion Dictionary'', Funk and Wagnalls, 1957. (1973 edition ) * Tozer, Jane and Sarah Levitt, ''Fabric of Society: A Century of People and their Clothes 1770–1870, Laura Ashley Press,

External links

{{sewing Fashion design Parts of clothing Sewing