Help with unkempt pleats

[The Wizard of BC]

You can send your good wool kilt to the dry cleaners. All you have to do it specify - in the strongest words possible - Have them write it in big red letters across the slip -

DO NOT PRESS!!!

Tell then to just clean the kilt and hang it up. Well set pleat creases on a kilt made from quality fabrics will survive quite a few dry cleanings without needing to be re-set.

The lesser quality kilts, and particularly those from Pakistan, not so much. It's not that they are not wool. It is in the spinning and weaving of the fabric. Good quality kilt fabrics are of 'Worsted' yarns which are then spun very tightly. When woven the yarns are set closely by the beater arm of the loom. The resulting cloth is heavy and dense without making it stiff. This is one of the reasons our fabrics cost so much.
I am finding that almost every kilt that comes into my shop from the Middle and Far East may or may not be worsted and when spun is usually done quite loosely. Then the weaving is usually beaten far looser than we find in kilt wool. The resulting fabrics, while wool, are more 'puffy'. The may be about as thick but the weight is far lighter. I find that what is usually sold as 'heavy weight' usually only refers only to the thickness of the cloth. I even had one kilt sold as 100% heavy weight wool that while it was actually thicker than 16oz kilt fabrics, weighed in at less than 6oz.

This kilt had just come from the dry cleaner and although it had not been pressed the pleats had lost the sharp creases and were full of wrinkles. So the customer had brought it to me for basting and pressing. At significant additional cost in my labor.

So my advice - learn to baste and press your own kilts. Regardless of the fabric they are made of, learning to baste and press is the best thing you can do if you own a kilt.