I have a running joke in my house about the green pleated skirt, which is that I own four of them and wear one. The other three hang there in a color I’d describe as somewhere between forest and army surplus, tags still attached on at least one, and every few months my sister will open the closet looking for something to borrow and just stand there counting them out loud like she’s doing inventory for a store that isn’t doing well. She’s not wrong to. I keep buying the idea of the skirt more than the actual skirt, and there’s a difference nobody warns you about.
The one I wear, I wear constantly, to the point where I’ve started to worry people think it’s my only skirt. It’s the one where the pleats actually behave, they fall the same way after the dryer as they did in the store, which sounds like a low bar until you’ve owned one that turns into a lettuce leaf after a single wash.
I have worn a version of this exact shape three separate times across three separate decades, and I can tell you with complete confidence that the fabric technology has improved even if the enthusiasm for the color hasn’t kept pace with it.
The waistband situation deserves its own honest mention. A green pleated skirt with any structure to it turns into a genuine hazard after a big lunch, I learned this at a wedding in 2011 and I still think about it every time I order something with rice in it.
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The good ones give you an inch of forgiveness. The bad ones make you sit at a strange angle for the rest of the reception and lie to everyone about being full.
I’ll admit the color itself is a gamble, and I say that as someone who owns four of the things. Green pleated is not a neutral, whatever the last three seasons of styling advice have tried to convince you, and on the wrong person in the wrong shade it reads a little bit Christmas pageant. On the right person, with the right shoe, it looks like she thought about it for four seconds and got it exactly right, which is its own kind of magic trick.
What actually gets worn to death in my house is the one that survived a full day of sitting, standing, and one memorable bus ride without going limp. What stays in the closet with the tag on is the one that looked incredible under store lighting and collapsed the second real life got involved. My sister took one look at the newest addition and said nothing, which from her is a review, and not a flattering one, but I’m keeping it anyway, mostly out of spite, and partly because I still think she’s wrong.
