Box vs Knife Pleats

[OC Richard]

...box pleat, which they state was the accepted standard for kilts "from the late 18th century till the middle of the 19th century", when today's knife pleats took over.

Peter would know best, but I will say that of the 5 kilted Highland regiments that survived the 1809 cuts the 78th, 79th, and 93rd used box pleats up until these regiments were amalgamated, and the Royal Regiment of Scotland today uses box pleats.

I don't know how far back it goes, but at some point the 42nd and 92nd adopted knife pleats.

So in the Scottish Highland regiments knife pleats were always in the minority and have now been abandoned altogether.

Also found it curious that box pleating is what Pakistani kilts use.

I don't think I've ever seen a Pakistani boxpleated kilt except for the military re-enactor kilts that What Price Glory was having made, their kilts for the 79th, 78th, and 93rd Highlanders being boxpleated of course.

Box pleats aren't easier to make, nor do they take less material, than knife pleats.

I took a kiltmaking class from Elsie Stuehmeyer who in the 1950s worked for the major Scottish kiltmaker of the time, Thomas Gordon & Son, where she made tons of military kilts both boxpleated and knifepleated.

She said up until a certain point in the construction (after the pleats are stitched) the two kilts were identical, with the same amount of fabric, same number of pleats, and same depth of pleats.

She demonstrated how she would fold each pleat in order to create the boxpleated look. She said it was a pain to do them, as it added an extra step to the making.

If you're referring to the "four yard boxpleated kilt", there's no 1-to-1 relationship between the number of yards and the sort of pleats. You can have a boxpleated kilt with four, six, or eight yards, ditto knifepleated kilts.

My impression is that Matt Newsome, perhaps based on a specific museum kilt, started making and selling 4-yard boxpleated kilts as a US-based historical re-creation. I'd never heard of such kilts until I learned about Matt and the Tartans Museum.

I collect vintage Highland Dress catalogues from the Scottish makers from c1905 up through the 1970s and none of those Scottish makers mention kilts like that. Rather, they offered ordinary knifepleated modern kilts in 6, 7, and 8 yards.

Here's a military 8-yard boxpleated kilt from the 78th Highlanders/Seaforth Highlanders



Here's a closeup of the pleats on an 8-yard boxpleated kilt from the 79th Highlanders/Cameron Highlanders.

You can see the extra fold in each pleat.