sett vs stripe

[figheadair]

Actually, I'm led by some to believe that box pleating is actually the more ancient style. .

Correct. Even (balanced) box pleats are the earliest sewn form and date to c.1780-1800. An increase in the amount of cloth caused a change in style to and overlapping box, something Bob Martin called a 'box-knife', and then somewhere around the middle of the 19th century we see the introduction of knife pleats. Even so, box pleats were still the standard form until the 1880s. In every style they were pleated to stripe.

Pleating to sett came in c.1880-90 and was the reason for the increase in the amount of cloth to the standard 8 yard kilt.