Now that you have purchased your suit, you should know how to look after it, so that you can get the most use out of it over the coming years. Here are a few tips and tricks that will keep your suits looking as good as when they were first bought, many years down the line.
Rotate Your Suits
Starting off, by rotating your suits and not wearing the same suit, day in and day out. If you have a few different suits, wearing a different suit each day will ensure that they won’t wear out as quickly, as less frequent use causes less “damage” to the suit. This especially applies to very fine fabrics that wear fast when worn frequently. This is where having the basic menswear colour palette - navy, grey and brown - is essential as these are the cornerstone colours of your wardrobe. Opting for these foundational colours will ensure that your suit rotation will be as versatile as possible.
Wearing Suits as Separates
Splitting up your suits and wearing the different parts of them independently is a great way to stretch out the life of the suit and also a great way to care for it. By doing this, different pieces of the suit will get less use, therefore increasing their lifespan. Wearing the jacket one day and the trousers on another will help prolong the lifespan as each piece is having less stress and wear. Again, this is where the basic menswear colour palette of navy, grey and brown are your friends as they will combine very well with each other as separates. If you wish to add complexity to your ensemble, play around with textures and patterns.
CLEAN BUT DONT FULLY DRY CLEAN:
It is very important to keep your suits as clean as possible. However, this doesn’t mean you should be bringing your suit to the dry cleaner every second week. Instead, you should spot clean as much as possible. If you get a stain, spot clean it as quickly as possible - get a damp cloth and blot at the stain. Some stains will be harder to clean than others so you need to exercise caution depending on the stain. If you do need to clean your suits, you most likely need to clean around the armhole for jackets and around the crotch and zipper for trousers. As such, get the dry cleaner to clean certain areas as the majority of the suit is probably fine and doesn’t need to be fully cleaned. A suit can only be dry cleaned 10-12 times in its life, so please try to stay away from the cleaners as much as possible.
QUICK CLEANING TIP:
A great way to deodorise your suits is an unusual one - go down to the off-licence and grab a bottle of vodka. The cheapest, easiest to find vodka without any flavourings will work well. Pour the vodka into a spray bottle and spritz it in the areas that need to be cleaned. The odours will be taken away when the alcohol evaporates. It won’t make it smell like a brand new car but it will dramatically help rid the garment of the prominent smells.
KNOW THE FABRIC:
Having knowledge of the fabric is a great asset as this aids you in knowing which suits you can wear more than others. For instance, a very fine Super 170s wool suit is something that you should only wear sparingly as the fine fabric will wear very quickly, especially if it is part of a regular rotation. However, a simple Super 110s wool suit isn’t as fine a fabric and will allow you to wear it a lot more regularly as it is a more resistant fabric. The likes of a pure wool suit will also wear more slowly than wool blended with cotton, silk, cashmere etc. As such, knowing a little more about the fabric will aid you in ensuring that your finer suits will last as will your normal suits.
BRUSH THEM OFF & HANG:
When you are finished wearing the suit after a day’s work, immediately brush it down with a clothes brush and put it on a wide brimmed hanger. Brushing the jacket and trousers down after being worn will take off any lint that has built up over the day. This is especially important on darker fabrics as lint would be more apparent on the fabric. Once done, by putting the suit on a wide-brimmed hanger, this will ensure the jacket's shoulders are supported until you wear the jacket again. This should be done to ensure the shoulders aren’t misshapen, especially if the jacket has some amount of shoulder padding. All jackets purchased with Louis Copeland’s will come with a wider hangar as standard to aid proper storage and care for your suits.
To bring everything together, it is important to look after your suits after you purchase them. The more you look after them, the longer they will last into your future. By rotating your suits, wearing them as separates, brush them off and properly hang them, spot clean and don’t dry clean them too often and finally having some fabric knowledge will go a long way.
