pleated to the "dreaded lawn chair effect"

[Barb T]

I like the tartan but I have to admit there doesn't seem to be a brilliant vibrancy in the colours as there is in some other tartans
I am also considering to have it pleated to the horizontal stripe.

So, to clarify what you're saying, a kiltmaker doesn't "pleat to a horizontal stripe". In order to achieve what you want (totally suppressing a vertical element), you have to pleat to a solid color block (i.e., every pleat has exactly the same solid color element in the pleat and nothing else). See the examples below:






The first kilt above was pleated to the gray block, the second to the green block, the third to the brown block. There are no vertical stripes or color boundaries in any of the pleats. Whether this can be done depends on the size of the sett and the size of the elements in the sett. Pleats in a guy's kilt are typically 3/4" to 1" across at the hips, and, if you don't have a single color block in the tartan that is that wide, there will _have_ to be a vertical color boundary somewhere in each pleat. Whether that introduces a subtle or a visible vertical element depends on the color contrast. Here's a kilt that is actually pleated to the stripe, but there's so little color contrast between the central stripe and the background color that it looks at a distance to be pleated to a solid color block:




In all of the examples above, the horizontal element is perfectly acceptable and doesn't give the "lawn chair" effect because the tartans aren't too "contrasty-stripey".

So, to totally suppress a vertical element and make a good-looking kilt, the tartan has to have both the right character _and_ the right size solid color block.