A pleat (plait in older English) is a type of fold formed by doubling fabric back upon itself and securing it in place. It is commonly used in clothing and upholstery to narrow a wide piece of fabric through gathering.
Pleats are categorized as pressed, that is, ironed or otherwise heat-set into a sharp crease, or unpressed, falling in soft rounded folds. Pleats sewn into place are called tucks.
A school uniform is a uniform worn by students primarily for a school or otherwise an educational institution. They are common in primary and secondary schools in various countries and are generally widespread in Africa, Asia, Oceania, the British Isles and much of the Americas, but are not common in the United States, Canada, and most countries in continental Europe.
An example of a uniform would be requiring button-up shirts, trousers for boys, and blouses and pleated skirts for girls, with both wearing blazers. A uniform can even be as simple as requiring collared shirts, or restricting colour choices and limiting items students are allowed to wear.
A skirt is the lower part of a dress or a separate outer garment that covers a person from the waist downwards.
At its simplest, a skirt can be a draped garment made out of a single piece of fabric (such as pareos). However, most skirts are fitted to the body at the waist or hips and fuller below, with the fullness introduced by means of darts, gores, pleats, or panels. Modern skirts are usually made of light to mid-weight fabrics, such as denim, jersey, worsted, or poplin. Skirts of thin or clingy fabrics are often worn with slips to make the material of the skirt drape better and for modesty.
In sewing and dressmaking, a ruffle, frill, or furbelow is a strip of fabric, lace or ribbon tightly gathered or pleated on one edge and applied to a garment, bedding, or other textile as a form of trimming.
Ruffles can be made from a single layer of fabric (which may need a hem) or a doubled layer. Plain ruffles are usually cut on the straight grain.
A shirt stud is a decorative fastener that fits onto a buttonhole on the front of a pleated shirt, or onto the starched bib of a stiff-front shirt. Such shirts have special buttonholes solely for shirt studs.
The neckline is the top edge or edges of a garment that surrounds the neck, especially from the front view. Neckline also refers to the overall visual line between all the layers of clothing and the neck and shoulders of a person, ignoring any unseen undergarments.
For each garment worn above the waist, the neckline is primarily a style line and may be a boundary for further shaping of the upper edge of a garment with, for example, a collar, cowl, darts, or pleats. In that respect it is similar to the waistline and hemline.
A style line is a seam in a garment made primarily for the purpose of its visual effect, rather than for the purpose of shaping of structuring the garment. By contrast, a dart or pleat by itself would not be considered a style line because although each can be used to produce a pleasing visual effect, their main purpose is to shape the garment by taking in ease or adding fullness respectively. Clearly though, there can be some ambiguity as when a dart is made as part of a seam which continues beyond the dart point. If the seam beyond the dart is straight, that is, not affecting the garment's fit, it would be considered a style line.