Pleated Things in Spring-Summer Collections
IN A CONSTANT WONDERZINE HEAD talks about trends from the podium that can be adapted for your wardrobe for the next six months. In this issue, we understand how the pleats, which most people associate with school uniforms, are interpreted by fashion houses from Prada to Christopher Kane.
How it all began
Pleating as a way of processing fabric appeared many centuries ago: the Egyptians came up with the first to fold the fabric, and the Greeks came up behind it; in Asia, cloth was also collected in plisse, trying to repeat origami figures and folds of fans. At the very beginning of the 20th century, the Spanish fashion designer Mariano Fortuny-i-Madrazo created the legendary dress "Delphos", which made a revolution because it leveled the corset and showed the female figure as it is. The dress was created from a piece of pleated silk and sat on the fit on the figure. Mariano Fortune was one of the first to fold the iron under a hot press until the fabric turned into a small corrugation (he patented his technique in 1909). Until the 1920s, it was indecent to appear in society in this dress, and only the wildest aristocrats wore it: Isadora Duncan, Natasha Rambova. The dress "delphos" was convenient to store: it was simply twisted and put away in a round box, resembling a hat. So, in the 20th day dress appears, including pleated tennis for an active pastime.
In the 1950s, the designers, led by, of course, Christian Dior, turned again to pleated things, this time returning to them the meaning of evening dresses. At this time, the creation of clothing (and especially the folds) leaves the fabric. Irish woman Sybil Connolly creates dresses with horizontal pleats, and French Madame Grere - fancy dresses with vertical. To understand the scale of what is happening, you need to take into account the fact that the creation of a pleated shred just 7 centimeters in length from Madame Gre took 3 meters of fabric. In 1955, the film “The Seven Year Itch” was released with Marilyn Monroe in the lead role, the cult scene from which everyone knows: a white pleated dress inflates the wind - and the dress remains firmly in the minds of millions. In 1989, Japanese Issey Miyake presented the first pleated and corrugated pieces from the Pleats series, which at that time was shot by American photographer Irvin Penn, who worked for Vogue. By 1993, Issey Miyake had already demonstrated a full spring-summer collection called Pleats Please, in which pleated dresses were made of polyester, which undoubtedly influenced the mass market. Little is remembered about the collection, although by 1997 about 700 thousand items with pleating had been sold, but Pleats Please are still producing perfumes.
How to wear things with pleating now
This season, pleated items showed all the big houses, because pleating is the simplest example of working with fabric texture, and texture is one of the main trends of the next season (fabric is grooved, with creases, etc.). So, Phoebe Faylo builds the Céline spring-summer collection around the pleating and shows dresses and sheer pleated midi-length skirts. Alexander Wang includes a lot of pleated items in the collection: dresses, mini-skirts, midi-length skirts, and also makes crop tops and even applies perforation on the pleating. Miuccia Prada is inspired by the school uniform. Haider Ackermann, Proenza Schouler (who started working with pleating back in the Resort collection) and Givenchy show midi-length dresses and skirts with pleats and inlays of metallic colors that resemble foil. Dries Van Noten puts on a pleated snake print, and also builds around half of his collection around corrugated materials (flute is a smaller fold than pleated). Marco Zanini for Rochas shows pleated dresses of shiny fabric, combining them with translucent cardigans. Ports 1961 show snow-white pleated items in combination with birken stocks. In the KTZ collection, as well as in the Resort collections, Vionnet and Alexander Wang have dresses and skirts made from pleated leather. Christopher Kane also uses many pleats, featuring dresses with pleated inserts, plus midi length pleated skirts. On some skirts Kane puts a print with flowers, the other leaves monotonous and translucent. Raf Simons for Christian Dior shows skirts with asymmetrical pleating, and in the couture collection - horizontal folds on translucent dresses, thereby starting the next trend trend for folds of clothes resembling origami. Under the curtain, you need to remember the modern Cinderella Lupita Nyong'go, which appeared this year at the Oscar ceremony in a blue Prada dress with pleating.
Judging by the shows, the midi-length skirt becomes the main thing with pleating this season. Ideal if it is translucent. And also on the wave of dress-T-shirts (resembling tennis dresses), decorated with pleating. Pleating itself is very elegant, so it is better to wear things with pleating with something simple, devoid of texture: a laconic crop top, a simple tuxedo, and a sweatshirt. And in order not to look too elegant, it is better to choose something on a flat course from shoes: birkenshtoki, slipona, ballet shoes with a pointed nose, men's shoes. Evening dresses with pleating will look good with laconic decorations made of precious metals (gold or silver), for example, such as those of Aurelia Biederman or Delletne De Dolphins.
BEWARE!
Everything is simple here - beware of long pleated skirts to the floor, which were all attributed five years ago and which now look like a relic of the past.
Photo:Getty Images / Fotobank (1), Sipa Press / Fotodom (3)