How to Fold a Suit, According to King Charles’s Former Suit Maker

The fabric itself is almost as important as the way your suit is packed.

Suits made from linen, a linen-wool blend, or a smooth, super-fine wool, for example, are the most susceptible to wrinkling. Thin, smooth fabrics may have a pleasant hand-feel, but they tend to travel poorly.

The experts at Redmayne recommend that frequent travelers invest in suits made from a fabric that can withstand repeated folding.

That could mean a fabric with a more open weave, like hopsack, whose coarser, grid-like texture offers the fabric some wrinkle resistance.

Other good options are suits with fabrics labeled as “high-twist.” This is a way of adding a springiness to the individual yarns so that they easily snap back into place.

Similarly, heavier wool fabrics such as flannels and tweeds will be more resistant to wrinkles than smooth fabrics.

Suits are incredibly complex garments, and most (even affordable, off-the-rack ones) usually have some degree of internal structure to help them drape well. This means that haphazardly folding your suit and smushing it between your toiletry bag and a pile of T-shirts can leave hard-set wrinkles in the fabric and change the way the jacket wears.

To keep your suit looking sharp, use Tom’s favorite suit-packing accessories: a few pairs of socks and a sweater “rolled up like a sausage.”

Folding these garments into your suit creates a softer landing for the fabric and also supports the suit’s structure.

To fold a suit like a Savile Row tailor, lay the suit flat on a table, and align the jacket’s front as if it were buttoned (but don’t button it).

Then smooth out the sleeves so that they are lying totally flat on the table, maintaining their natural curve.

Take a pair of rolled socks, and slip them into the area where the sleeve meets the shoulder (this helps maintain the shape of the jacket’s shoulder). You can also put a pair of unfolded socks into the sleeve itself for some additional padding.

Place a rolled-up sweater horizontally across the waist of the jacket, and, holding the sleeves and the hem, fold the jacket in half so that the sweater is sitting in the fold.

Using another rolled-up sweater or T-shirt, place it vertically down the now-folded jacket, and fold it in on itself again.

To fold your pants, flatten them on a table along the crease. Place a pair of unfolded socks across the pants, roughly at the midpoint, and fold the trousers in half. Then, using another pair of socks placed at the new midpoint, fold them over once more.

The result is a suit folded into a neat parcel with a small footprint. When packing the folded suit, try to rest it on a flat surface of clothes within the bag itself.

There are tons of wrinkle-removing hacks floating around the internet, from using a hotel steamer on your suit to hanging it in a bathroom while you run a steamy shower (this one’s as old as time).

Don’t do this. Steam can ruin a suit.

“A quality garment has a fullness to it. It’s been pressed and finished, and putting it in an overly humid environment can soften the construction inside the garment … and spoil the finish of your suit,” Tom said.

More-affordable suits can also be damaged by steam. Most suits will have at least a partially fused interlining. And when steam is applied to the wrong places, it can occasionally cause that lining to come unfused, resulting in a series of unsightly, often permanent wrinkles and bubbles on your suit.

“In an ideal world, you want to arrive somewhere and give your suit a hanging-up, in a dry, warm room for 12 hours,” Tom said. This should be enough to get the wrinkles to fall out.

If you’re not happy with how your suit looks the next day, your best bet might be to find a reputable local dry cleaner that can press your suit by hand.

This article was edited by Ben Frumin and Catherine Kast.