Black Pleated Skirt - Faux Leather Knife-Pleat Midi | Bourton

A black pleated skirt in soft faux leather, pressed into fine knife pleats from a high elasticated waist and released into a full sweep that moves with you.

The cloth is a faux leather: a smooth coated skin with a soft satin sheen that runs down the lit face of every pleat and drops into a deep shadow in the fold behind it. That is what makes this skirt read the way it does, because the pleats are pressed the whole way from the waistband to the hem and each one catches the light on its own. The waistband is a plain band gathered on elastic the whole way round, set high on the waist and closed by a clean seam at its base, so the skirt pulls straight on. There are no belt loops and no pockets. Below the seam the pleats fan out into a wide A line, and the hem is not a smooth curve but a level ring of small even points, one for each pleat, which is what a properly pressed pleat leaves behind. Wear it with a fine knit tucked in and ankle boots, or with a heavy jumper left loose over the top.

The fit

This one comes in a single size. The maker publishes a waist of 60 to 100 cm, and that range is the stretch of the elastic: 60 cm is where the band sits at rest and 100 cm is as far as it will go. Read against the body that covers UK 6 through to UK 18, which is our own reading of the maker's figure rather than a size the maker publishes, and we have stopped at 18 to keep well inside the stretch. On length the maker gives 84 cm, and we checked it ourselves against the cut-out photograph of the skirt worn, which reads 80 to 82 cm, so the figure holds. Worn high, that puts the hem low on the calf, a hand's width above the ankle. The figures are set out in the size guide next to the size selector.

Details

• Smooth coated faux leather with a soft satin sheen and no grain
• Fine knife pleats pressed from the waistband seam all the way to the hem, roughly twenty six around the skirt
• Plain waistband gathered on elastic the whole way round, so the skirt pulls straight on
• No zip, no button, no belt loops and no pockets
• Full A line, the pleats opening out well beyond the width of the waistband
• Level hem the whole way round, finished in the small even points that pressed pleats make, with no slit and no vent on any of the maker's standing photographs
• One size, the maker giving a waist of 60 to 100 cm and a length of 84 cm
• The maker gives the material as PU and its own listing calls the cloth PU leather. PU is polyurethane, so this is faux leather, and that agrees with the sheen and the way the folds break on its photographs. It is not leather and we do not sell it as such
• None of the maker's photographs shows the back of the skirt, so we cannot rule out a seam or a fastening there, and we pass that on as it stands
• Wipe clean with a damp cloth and let it dry away from heat, our own recommendation as the maker gives no care instructions

See the rest of the skirts.