Pleats tied to formality?

[unixken]

Yes, a box pleat or Kingussie would be the exception to this. I was talking about knife pleats.
ith:

But a tartan in a given sett size may require the pleats to be one width, while a larger sett in the same tartan may allow or require the pleats be a different width. Certainly the amount of fabric used will also have some bearing. These, and the size of the individual wearing the kilt, will all influence the size and number of pleats. Does this then not try to mandate that only people "wide enough", wearing a "properly sized" sett, can call their kilt formal, while relegating everything else to causal status? Does this young child's kilt (linked from the Scotweb site) not qualify as formal, because of the limited number of pleats his small frame can fit in to?



Again, I feel the determining factor in what can be dressed up (and what can't), is not dictated by the technical details of the pleats, but where on the body the kilt is designed to be worn. It's a simpler, more direct definition in my mind, and is less vulnerable to the fractions of an inch that determine a good pleat width for a given tartan, amongst all the other factors that go into the construction of the kilt.