Quote Originally Posted by Dixiecat View Post
Gotcha. I forgot that military box pleats aren't actually box pleats, but folded over knife pleats. Whoops.
Actually, they are actually box pleats, actually. :-)

They are simply box pleats made with 8 yards of cloth, rather than four.

An historic box pleated kilt, made from 4 yards of cloth, has wide box pleats which have little to no overlap and the pleats are equal depth on either side.

As you increase the yardage, you end up with more pleats, and more narrow pleats. There will be more overlap on the interior. And while side of the pleat will be deeper (due to the increased amount of cloth) the other side of the pleat will actually become more shallow.

So when you do this with a full 8 yards, the box pleats do indeed "look like" what we would expect a normal modern knife pleated kilt to look like, with the pleats twisted around. But it is, in fact, exactly what a box pleated kilt looks like when made from 8 yards of cloth.