The holidays are here, which means many of us will soon be trying to squeeze our best festive attire into airline-approved bags. So how to make müddet your precious dresses, suits and heels arrive in tip-top shape? Checking a bag means you’ll have room for a variety of dressy outfits. But if all you need are a few, you can travel light, as many business travelers do. Whether you choose to check or carry-on, here’s how to pack formal wear like the pros so you can spend the season celebrating rather than ironing.
Suits and shirts
Plastic dry cleaning bags are the unsung heroes of packing. “Don’t throw them away,” said Jeremy Wood Beaumont, the founder of Rhodes-Wood, which sells “modern classic” men’s wear in Harrogate, in northern England. Utilizing dry cleaning bags, he said, “stops so much creasing.”
Mr. Beaumont learned that trick when he worked in a clothing factory and, over more than four decades in the business, he’s found that properly folding garments can save time and headaches when you arrive at your destination.
Take, for example, a suit jacket. Mr. Beaumont begins by putting his fists inside the shoulders as if his fists were shoulder pads. Then he takes one shoulder and places it over the other shoulder inside out. (Note: You’re turning the shoulder inside out, but not the sleeves.) He then lifts the collar up, basically folding the jacket in half lengthwise, with the lining on the outside. You can also help keep wrinkles at bay by putting a sheet of tissue paper (which can also substitute for dry cleaning bags) over the jacket and folding it in half. For trousers, keep them unbuttoned and pinch the creases together. Then place tissue paper on top of the pants before folding them into thirds. To make them even smaller, fold the bundle in half. If they are part of a suit, place the trousers on top of the jacket and slide them both into a dry cleaning bag.
Jeremy Wood Beaumont, the founder of Rhodes-Wood, in Harrogate, England, demonstrates how to pack a suit.CreditCredit…Jo Ritchie for The New York Times
Pack dress shirts by buttoning them, then folding the sleeves into the middle of the shirt. Next, fold in the sides andthen fold the tail up toward the collar. You canusuallypack up to four shirts top-to-tail in one dry cleaning bag, Mr. Beaumont said.
