## The Hands That Fold the Pleats

The Hands That Fold the Pleats

The atelier sits four floors above the Via Fogazzaro showroom, and if you arrive at the right hour — mid-morning, when the light slants through the north-facing windows — you might catch Lucia Ferrero at her table, a length of duchess satin pinned taut between her left hand and the edge of the board. She is folding pleats. Not pressing them, not gathering them with a machine stitch, but folding each one by hand, fixing it with a near-invisible tack, then moving to the next. The rhythm is hypnotic. The result, once the skirt is released from the board and allowed to hang, is a pleat structure that moves like water but holds its form like architecture.

Ferrero has worked for Miu Miu for sixteen years. She is one of seven artisans in the Milan atelier responsible for what the house calls plissage à la main — hand-pleating — and she is the one entrusted with the house's most recognisable silhouette: the box-pleat mini that debuted in the Spring/Summer 2022 collection and has since appeared, in various fabrics and colourways, in every subsequent season. You know the piece. Low-slung waist, crisp pleats radiating from a flat front panel, hemline that skims mid-thigh. It photographs like a schoolgirl uniform but behaves, on the body, like couture.

The pleating itself is deceptively simple. Each fold measures precisely 2.5 centimetres at the waistband, tapering slightly toward the hem to allow for movement. The fabric — usually a medium-weight wool, occasionally satin or taffeta — is cut on the straight grain, no bias, which means the pleats must be set by hand and steam-pressed in stages. A single skirt takes Ferrero roughly eight hours, start to finish. She works alone. There is no assembly line for this.

"People assume it's all done by machine now," says Gabriele Morra, the atelier's technical director, who has overseen Miu Miu's garment construction since 2004. "But a machine pleat is fixed. It doesn't breathe. What Lucia does — what all our pleat specialists do — is create a structure that responds to the body. The pleats open when you walk, close when you stand still. That's not something you can programme."

Morra is careful not to romanticise the process, but he is also clear about what distinguishes Miu Miu's approach from the broader ready-to-wear market. The house does not outsource its signature pieces. The pleated skirts, the nappa leather jackets with their hand-set sleeves, the ballet flats with their elasticated topline — all of these are made in-house, in ateliers that report directly to the Via Fogazzaro headquarters. It is a model that has become increasingly rare in an industry where even storied maisons now farm out production to third-party workshops in the Veneto or, more commonly, overseas.

A Question of Training

Ferrero did not set out to become a pleat specialist. She trained, as most Italian garment artisans do, at a technical institute — in her case, the Istituto Marangoni in Milan — and spent her early twenties working for a series of mid-tier labels, learning pattern-cutting, draping, and the mechanics of industrial sewing. She joined Miu Miu in 2008, initially as a sample machinist, and it was only after two years on the floor that she was invited to apprentice in the pleating atelier.

The apprenticeship lasted six months. She worked alongside Elena Riva, a master pleater who had come to Miu Miu from Prada's couture atelier and who has since retired. Riva's method, which she learned in the 1970s under a now-defunct Milanese couture house, involves no templates. The pleats are measured by eye, fixed with silk thread, and pressed in sections using a hand-held steam iron that weighs just over a kilo. Ferrero describes the process as closer to sculpture than sewing.

"You're not following a pattern," she says, in an interview conducted through the house's press office. "You're reading the fabric. Some materials want to hold a sharp fold. Others resist. You adjust."

It is this sensitivity to material behaviour that Miu Miu prizes, and it is also what makes the house's pleated pieces so difficult to copy. A factory can reproduce the silhouette, but it cannot reproduce the hand. The pleats will be there, but they will sit flat, lifeless. On a Ferrero skirt, the pleats have depth. They catch light differently depending on the angle. They move.

The Signature Piece

The box-pleat mini was not, initially, intended as a signature. It appeared in the Spring/Summer 2022 show as one piece among many — a schoolgirl reference, playful but not precious, styled with knee socks and loafers. The fashion press noted it. Buyers ordered cautiously. Then it began appearing on certain bodies: Hailey Bieber in Los Angeles, Emma Corrin in London, a rotating cast of actresses at film festivals. The skirt became, in the parlance of the moment, a thing.

Miu Miu responded by expanding the line. The Autumn/Winter 2022 collection included the same silhouette in charcoal wool, in black taffeta, in a Prince of Wales check. Spring/Summer 2023 brought a leather version, pleats heat-set into lambskin, which required an entirely different construction method and took Ferrero three weeks to develop. By 2024, the box-pleat mini was available in fourteen fabrications and had become the house's second-highest-grossing SKU, after the Wander bag.

The numbers are not public, but one can infer. Miu Miu does not produce at Zara scale, but neither is it operating at couture volumes. The atelier completes roughly 1,200 pleated skirts per season, each one hand-finished, each one bearing a small interior label that reads Fatto a mano in Italia — made by hand in Italy. Ferrero's name does not appear on the label. None of the artisans' names do. This is not, by industry custom, how credit is assigned.

What Comes Next

Ferrero is forty-one now, and she has begun training two younger artisans in her method. One of them, Sara Lombardi, joined the atelier last year after completing a degree in textile conservation. The other, Matteo Ricci, is a former pattern-cutter who grew frustrated with the repetitive nature of industrial garment work and applied to Miu Miu on the recommendation of a friend. Both are learning the pleat.

"It's not something you can teach in a week," Morra says. "Or even a month. You need time with the fabric. You need to make mistakes."

Ferrero is more direct. "The first fifty skirts you make will be wrong," she says. "You'll think they're right, but they won't move correctly. You only understand that after you've made a hundred."

There is no formal succession plan, but there is an understanding. Ferrero will not pleat forever. Her hands, already showing the early signs of repetitive strain, will eventually require rest. When that happens, Lombardi or Ricci — or someone not yet hired — will take over the table by the north-facing window. The work will continue. The skirts will still take eight hours. The pleats will still open and close.

One suspects this is the point. Miu Miu is not, despite its reputation for archival irreverence and knowing pastiche, a house that believes in obsolescence. The box-pleat mini will eventually recede from the spotlight, replaced by some other silhouette, some other fixation. But the atelier will remain, and the artisans will remain, and the work — the patient, specific, hand-driven work — will remain. It is not romantic to say so. It is simply facture.