Style Watch — A Pleat in Time Saves Nine

Pleated trousers from Alphav­ille

While recently doing the manda­tory crawl up Sydney’s Oxford Street, look­ing for noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar, but admir­ing every­thing just the same, I stum­bled across an unas­sum­ing char­ac­ter that kept appear­ing in the same stores I seemed to be visiting.

Dressed in some (appro­pri­ately) torn skinny jeans, a but­ton up in a very pale bor­der­line white, pink shirt and some black clog like sneak­ers, he seemed to have a lit­tle more pizazz than the rest of us all clad in black.

Finally, in one store, he deci­sively grabbed a pair of pleated trousers, in a dark gray shade of wool.  Upon emerg­ing from the change room to inquire whether there were other sizes to be tried, and vari­a­tions on the theme, the whole store seemed to stop and stare.

Could it be?

The per­fect trousers?

Bet­ter than skinny jeans?

Boys and girls alike began chat­ting about the pants, even the store clerks hur­riedly ran to tuck away pairs in their own sizes.

I can assure you, that pleated trousers, or trousers with a lit­tle more vol­ume do not, how­ever look the same on every­one.  It really does help if you are six foot tall and haven’t put on a kilo since mid­dle school.  They can still look good though, and judg­ing by the SS10 shows, we’ll def­i­nitely be see­ing more of them soon.

It’s all about hunt­ing down the right pair, the right vol­ume, cre­at­ing the right pro­por­tions and styling them just right.  A lit­tle messy roll to reveal an ankle, or the right belt to keep them in place…all day…while you crawl up Oxford Street.