Shop the Beige Pleated Skirts We’d Actually Wear

Okay so the beige pleated skirt is having a whole moment again and I have thoughts, and not all of them agree with each other, which is kind of the point of this post.

One of us thinks beige pleated is the most useless combo in fashion, like why would you take a skirt that already shows every crease and make it the color that shows every stain too. Another one of us wears hers to actual client meetings and swears it’s the only skirt that’s never once made her look like she’s headed to a work event she’s dreading. Both things are true at the same time and that’s the whole vibe of this category, it photographs like a dream and then real life happens to it.

Let’s talk pockets because there basically aren’t any, and if there are, they’re the fake kind that are sewn shut for “the line of the garment,” which, sure, but I have a phone, I have a life, I need somewhere for my phone to go that isn’t my hand for six hours straight. I bought one last month that had actual functioning pockets and I filmed a whole “wait it has pockets” video because I was that surprised, and the group chat response was one person going “not the bar being THIS low” and honestly, fair, but also, correct.

The pleats are where I lose my mind a little. They look incredible in the first thirty seconds of wearing it, like sharp, crisp, main character energy. Then you sit down for one meeting or one Uber ride and they start softening in weird places, and by hour four you’ve got pleats in some spots and just fabric in others, and it reads less “intentional” and more “I slept in this.” Some of these hold their shape through a wash and a full day of sitting, some completely give up after one spin cycle, and there is no way to tell which one you got until you’ve already worn it out.

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I’ll be honest, this one’s a bit of a gamble depending on your body and your day.

If you’re tall it can read effortless. If you’re not, it can read costume, specifically “I’m about to hand out programs at a wedding,” and I say that as someone who has been handed a program at a wedding while wearing beige pleats and had to sit with that thought the entire ceremony.

I still buy them though, every season, because when they work, they actually work, they photograph incredible, they move great on camera, and for like the first hour of wearing one I feel completely put together in a way almost nothing else gives me. The trick is just knowing you’re buying an hour of perfect and a day of managing expectations, and honestly most of my closet operates on that exact deal anyway.