This short skirt is the best seller at Claudie Pierlot this season

An old refrain or the most subversive uniform of the season? After years of exile, the pleated skirt is making a comeback that is anything but innocent. Behind its demure airs, it hides an incendiary potential, provided you know how to shame it properly.

It’s a well-known syndrome, all it takes is a flap of Miuccia Prada ‘s wings for a piece to come back to haunt the catwalks and wardrobes. Long relegated to the rank of austere uniform – Catholic boarding school, British schools or leaders – the pleated skirt has been undergoing a rehabilitation for a few seasons. Wise or provocative? Assumed innocence or a well-felt snub? The line is thin, and that’s all its charm.

Halfway between purity and sexy, pleating cultivates ambiguity. Alessandro Michele at Gucci reinjected it into our fantasies with lamé versions, but it was Miuccia Prada who definitively tore it from the school benches to send it directly to the field of cool. Now omnipresent in its mini version, the pleated skirt oscillates between young model girl and bad girl on the run.

At Claudie Pierlot, we’re getting into the swing of things with a tailored version that seems to have come straight out of the corridors of the Sorbonne. Impeccable pleats, a mini length but not too much, so as not to offend Grandma, and a controlled preppy look. The kind of piece that seems sensible, but could perfectly accompany a cigarette in front of a carriage entrance in the Marais on a Saturday night. The very sensible navy blue is balanced by a Corte cut that dynamites the top-of-the-class suit. The devil, always, is in the details: a buckle at the waist, to make an impression without warning.

How to tame the pleated skirt without looking like a communicant?

Put away the tight blazers and ballet flats, the pleated skirt demands some well-considered counterpoints. We imagine it married with cowboy boots or biker boots, just to break the stiffness of the pleats. A white poplin shirt tied in a hurry, gold hoop earrings in the style of a girl from the Bronx , or an XXL turtleneck sweater in the style of Caroyln Bessette-Kennedy to play it discreetly incendiary. Style is the art of the gap, and the pleated skirt is no exception.

Well played, the pleated skirt is anything but stuck. Poorly mastered, it sends you straight back to the Catholic uniform box. Its real power is to confuse the tracks.