Why pleats have endured from ancient Greece to modern fashion in designs by Chanel, Issey Miyake, Fortuny and Robert Wun, and worn by Sofía Vergara, Greta Lee and Saoirse Ronan
The style’s timeless appeal was on show in a Dolce & Gabbana dress at the Emmy’s, in a The Row gown at the Lacma Art+Film Gala, and at Elle’s annual Women in Hollywood event
From cocoon-like Issey Miyake separates to preppy school uniforms, pleats are ubiquitous when you really pay attention.
While fashion has zigged and zagged as usual over the last decade, pleats have endured: remember Pieter Mulier’s hit spring 2025 collection for Alaïa, shown at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, which referenced the late Azzedine Alaïa’s love of pleating? Or the baby blue pleated Prada gown Lupita Nyong’o wore to the 2014 Academy Awards, which planted her firmly on many a best-dressed list?
Or further back, with Marilyn Monroe’s famous pleated ivory halter dress in 1955’s The Seven Year Itch, and French couturier Madame Grès’ signature Hellenic draped gowns made in mid-century Paris, which inspire countless designers (Alaïa and Mulier included) to this day?
Big picture, decades are a blink of an eye; in a way, humans have almost never not worn pleats. According to New York-based fashion historian Ruby Redstone, pleated fabrics can be traced back to Ancient Greece, when togas were the pinnacle of style.
While people once assumed that the Greeks were simply manipulating fabric and belting the pleats in place, studies done in the 50s through to the 70s revealed that they used egg white paste to fix the folded fabric, Redstone says.
“They’d use the paste to create the organic-looking rippling pleats that would fall down to the ground, but [the fabrics] would dry really stiff. The stiff togas we see in marble sculptures are actually probably more representative of what the dresses looked like,” she explains.
