For decades pleated trousers, along with the scrunchie and jelly sandals, have been absent from international fashion, perhaps considered a naughty 90s flirtation out of step with the new millennium. However, a smattering of SS16 shows from the likes of Altuzarra, Hugo Boss and Proenza Schouler suggest pleated trousers are making a comeback.
Wearing pleated trousers is no longer the preserve of power dressers – the new pleated trouser exudes an ephemeral fragility, quite the opposite of its well-known 90s iteration.
As the look gathers steam and more houses explore how to style pleated trousers, we can look forward to ever more daring and exploratory takes on the look. Here are some of the best ways to style them.
Embrace volume
The pleated trend revival began with the Proenza Schouler trousers presented during SS16 show at New York fashion week. Creative director Lazaro Hernandez revealed the show’s rather curious inspiration: ‘We were looking at bananas, things that peel away from the body’. The collection explored ideas like drapery and the ephemerality of fashion as pleated flamenco skirts drifted down the runway like a second skin. Loose and billowy, they created an ever-shifting silhouette: there one second and gone the next.
Of course a pleated skirt isn’t going to rattle the steeled nerves of the fashion industry. The show’s much vaunted denouement, cropped pleated trousers, sent fashion journalists into overdrive. Voluminous and drapey, the label's trousers created the same shifting silhouettes as the collection’s flamenco dresses. Styling this look is all about creating ample opportunity to highlight the fabric’s amorphous silhouette, with models wearing similarly billowy blouses embellished with details like oversized cuffs and Comme des Garçons-style ruffles.
Micro pleats for streamlined silhouettes
Proenza Schouler pleated trousers were not a total rejection of the 90s style. Indeed, they actually embrace and rework a popular 90s pleated look. For the most part, women’s pleated trousers in the 90s suffered from an awkward, hip-heavy silhouette caused by the pleat being built into the waist. In their 21st-century iteration, however, pleated trousers mostly reference the micro pleat, a style that had its debut in 1993, when Issey Miyake launched the offshoot Pleats Please label.
The micro pleat encouraged stylists to create outfits that centred on the pleat purely as an embellishment, not as a structural feature. This liberated the placement of pleats on garments in ways not seen again until today. Pleats can now be styled for a more formal look, such as when worn with a coat or a blazer as seen at the Proenza Schouler show, or in a completely informal way, perhaps worn like relaxed-fit yoga pants with a simple tee.
An iconic style from the outset, and sported by runway legends like Grace Jones, Miyake’s designs quickly defined micro pleat looks, and pleated trousers outfit ideas, unsurprisingly, ran wild. That isn't to say that pleats abandoned the suit, its traditional stomping ground – quite the opposite. With the innovation of the micro pleat, pleated shirts (Michael Kors is your go-to here) became popular, creating a head-to-toe pleated style. The complement of a pleated shirt crosses that bold frontier into pleated suit territory.
Take the plunge with deeper pleats
The vogue for the micro pleat is not to say that traditional pleated trousers have been completely banished to the margins of fashion. A few brave houses have challenged the reluctance for wearing pleated trousers and turned it into a bold and contemporary design. Pleated palazzo trousers have appeared on the catwalks at Alexander McQueen and Rahul Mishra, both of which featured the style prominently in their SS17 shows in Paris. This look had its beginning in the Valentino SS15 show, which exhibited pleated skirts with wide-fronted, box-pleat-style tailoring. Unlike the micro pleat, the palazzo trousers’ pleats are built into the garment’s design, beginning at the waist and creating a deeper, more dramatic pleat. For a quintessentially laid back and ever-so-slightly bohemian look, style them with a hip-hugging skirt or a sarong. For more formal pleated trousers outfit ideas, a subtle white blouse is a good complement.
Of course, there are still some houses that explore traditional pleated trousers. Donnah Mabel eschews the fashion for extraneous folds of fabric, instead focusing attention on sharp, streamlined silhouettes. These pleated trousers are drawn out by the ingenious (and no doubt painstakingly difficult) technique of colouring the crest of the pleat red – creating a striped pattern along the contours of the garment.
There is no doubt: pleated trousers are back. Thanks to the profound micro pleat revival, pleated trousers can be as statement making or as tailored as you want them to be, creating new opportunities to embrace the pleated suit phenomenon in unexplored ways.