Pleating Opinion

[OC Richard]

To me pleating to the stripe is always preferred because you get two looks for the price of one.

I very much prefer having the back of the kilt present a different thing than the front.

Certainly pleating to the yellow line is the most striking.

Yet, not being a big fan of yellow in general, I myself would go with the blue line.

There are visual, historical, and philosophical reasons for pleating to a stripe (or block) rather than to the tartan/sett.

The visual has already been said. The historical reason is that pleating to the tartan/sett appears to be a recent innovation.

The philosophical or art-theory reason is the principle of "form follows function".

So in your house it would be possible to paint over a window to look like a continuation of the wall surrounding it, to try to make it disappear.

But a window's function is to see outside, so why not let a window's function dictate what it looks like? Let it look like what it is: a rectangular hole in the wall with a rectangle of glass held in a frame filling the hole.

This principle tells us that we should let a row of pleats look like a row of pleats, not like an imitation of the flat fabric which flanks it.

All this is well and good however there do exist tartans the visual effect of which depends on all the colours being seen in their proper proportions. To me these rare few tartans look best pleated to the sett.