Pleats: for and against

Even if you granddad says it is the latest fashion and that without pleats your trousers cannot be worn, it’s just the case when you can and have to stand your own ground. It is necessary to know that pleats are only useful if you wear your trousers high, or if you are overweight. Otherwise you may avoid them all together!

If the trousers are worn on your natural waist (it is above your hip bones), pleats are appropriate. The waist is normally the slimmest point on a person, which is one reason men wore their trousers there, and why jackets are nipped in there – to accentuate the difference in width from shoulder to waist. Pleats, worn on the waist, can be flattering for larger men. They mean that their trousers fall straight down rather than going in first, highlighting a belly.

If your trousers have a high rise (the length from crotch to waistband) and are sitting on your waist, they need to go out before they go in. They need to expand from this slim point to get up and over the hip bones. Otherwise they would be skintight from the waist all the way down to the middle of the thighs. Pleats are necessary. They enable this expansion neatly and elegantly, dovetailing back into the line of the trousers when width is no longer needed after the mid-thigh point.

But you do not need them if you wear your trousers on your hips (as most do these days). This is also easy to determine – your trousers sit on the hip bone. The skin has hard hip bone underneath, not squidgy stomach. Pleats worn on the hips make your thighs look like melons. They create needless volume. Combine pleats with a sharp narrowing to the ankle, and cuffs at the bottom of the trouser, and you have the abomination of so many American khakis. The pleats give volume at the top of the leg. The narrow ankle accentuates this proportion. And the cuffs make your leg two inches shorter.

So, now you have at least the slightest inkling of how and when pleats may be flattering and when you should get rid of them, if you don’t want to look ridiculous.