How to Look After Your Suits

Many people look after their suits badly. This may seem obvious. After all men hang their suits on pegs, leave them on the floor after a day’s wear and occasionally bundle them into bags. For the most expensive piece of clothing a man owns, it is generally not treated well. But the biggest mistake he makes is dry cleaning his suits too often.

The chemicals in the dry cleaning process damage natural fibres of wool or cotton, thinning and weakening them. Over time the material at stress points such as the crotch and elbows will wear down. Dry cleaning is still the most effective, indeed really the only effective way to get dirt out of these materials. But often the suits simply aren’t dirty.

Any dirt that does accumulate during a day’s wear can easily be brushed off in the evening. Simply hang up your jacket and trousers and brush them a few times with a soft-bristled brush. This removes the specks of dirt before they can get ground into the material through wearing or pressing.

Suits brushed this way after use should only need to be dry-cleaned twice a year. Some enthusiasts recommend only dry cleaning your suit before it is stored away for the season – so once a year – but this rather suggests that they own more suits than the average man, meaning few uses of the suit each week, and only wear a suit for six months of the year, again suggesting less use.

Dry cleaning twice a year should be sufficient for a suit worn once or twice a week. If you wear a suit more often than that, its lifetime is going to be considerably shortened anyway.

Hang your suit up every night and always leave it for a day before wearing again, to let it recover and drape out its wrinkles naturally. Heavier materials and linen should be left for at least two days.

Many recommend steaming your suit in the morning to remove any last wrinkles. This is often impractical, but it is worth doing occasionally. Buy a portable steamer, or use the steam setting on your iron to puff steam into the material while it is hanging up (make sure it is on a low heat as well). You will sometimes see staff in shops doing this to suits on display, to make them appear crisp and fresh.

If the crease on your trousers also softens over a few weeks, this can be steamed back in with an iron, but again make sure it is on a low heat.

That’s pretty much all you need to do. Store the suits with plenty of space between them in a closet, preferably in cloth suit bags to keep moths away (the brushing out of dirt should also make the material less attractive to the little bleeders). And if you are the kind of man that stores seasonal suits away for six months, make sure they are clean and wrinkle-free before you do so.

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A Sliding Scale of Formality: Shoes/Trousers

You see quite a few bankers around this part of London wearing driving shoes with their suits. They presumably think they’ve stumbled onto a great thing – like loafers, but different, and in a huge range of colours.

But then they can’t see their suit trousers piled up on the rubber nubbins that driving shoes often have on their heels. To those walking behind them, it looks just as bad as wearing chunky trainers with a suit.

Driving shoes and worsted wool (the smooth wool of most suits) are just too far apart on the formality scale. This is why they look wrong together; why suddenly the shoes make suit trousers look flimsy and insubstantial, a little like pyjamas.

Here is my approximation of the sliding scale of formality:

Shoes Trousers

Wholecut Oxfords Worsted wool

Toecap Oxfords (quarter brogues) Worsted wool/linen or cotton

Monk-front shoes Worsted wool

Half-brogues Worsted wool/linen or cotton

Derbys (Bluchers) Flannel/worsted/cords or khakis

Smart slip-ons (Norwegian split-toe) Worsted/cords or khakis

Full brogues (wingtips) Flannel/cords

Suede/Nubuck Anything but worsted

Deck shoes Cords or khakis/jeans

Driving shoes Khakis/jeans

[Notes: This list does not include boots, extending above the ankle makes any of these types a notch more casual; neither does it include shorts, as I think they can look good with anything but the top three types of shoe; double soles also make any of these a notch more casual, particularly monk-fronts; patent leather should be reserved for formalwear; cotton is the most versatile material and can be hard to pin down, as jeans can go with all but a few of these shoes, as can khakis arguably.]

These, to me, are the types of shoe (beginning with the most formal and ending at the bottom with the most casual) that most suit a material of trouser.

The more formal and elegant a piece of clothing the more delicate its materials and textures are likely to be. Worsted wool needs shoes with sleek shapes, slim soles and clean designs. Heavier wools need heavier shapes, most obviously flannel with brogues. The rough seams and rubber ridges of driving shoes are more suited to jeans or more casual trousers.

Within this range, combinations can work by going up or down one notch, possibly even two. But the problem of wearing driving shoes with worsted is demonstrated – the two are just too far apart.

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How to Salvage Your Clothes

This is advice that was given to me on when you can save clothes that are ripped, stained or holed, and what to do about it.

The situation: A sweater with a hole in it
Can it be salvaged? The more unravelled the fabric and the finer the knit, the more difficult it is to mend without being too obvious.
What to do: Find a seamstress who can reattach the loose knitted ends. Whatever you do, don’t wear a sweater with a hole in it if you plan on saving it.

The situation: A sock with a hole in it
Can it be salvaged? No point. The same goes for t-shirts.
What to do: Buy a new one and move on.

The situation: A small, clean cut through a suit
Can it be salvaged? Yes, provided it’s a cut rather than a rip and that the weave does not have a complicated pattern.
What to do: The services of a good reweaver, also known as an invisible mender. Trouble is, invisible menders are very hard to spot. Alice Zotta at 2 West 45th St (Room 1701) is recommended in New York.

The situation: A suit jacket with bubbly lapels
Can it be saved? No. The bubbles happen when a cheap suit – the kind that has a fused construction, made with glue rather than stitched – is caught in the rain. The glue dissolves. To tell if your jacket is fused or canvassed, pinch the material around a buttonhole with both hands, one on the inside and one on the outside. See if there is any material floating between the outside and inside when you separate them.
What to do: Buy a more expensive suit.

The situation: Salt-stained shoes
Can they be saved? Yes, provided they aren’t also dried out (see below).
What to do: Take a 50-50 solution of water and vinegar and wipe it sparingly over the shoes. Wipe off the excess. Once the salt stains have disappeared, treat your shoes to a loving, liberal repolish at the cobblers.

The situation: Shoes whose leather has become cracked by too-rapid drying after a downpour. Or, indeed, a lack of shoe cream for a good few years.
Can they be saved? Sorry. Consider this a cautionary tale. Leather is organic, and if you dry it out too quickly, it’ll go stiff and the fibers will break at the stress points.
What to do: Next time, wipe down your wet shoes and then dry them slowly, away from direct heat. Put newspaper inside to absorb the moisture.

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Reader Question: Tips on the Go

Nick, London: Do you have any practical tips for dealing with stains on clothing and other practical tips?

Sure. First, some practical tips to deal with problems if you are on the road and not within reach of a good haberdasher.

Situation: Unshined shoes.
What to do: First, try rubbing them lightly with a cloth or towel. Much of what appears to be a dullness in the leather is often accumulated dust. In fact, this should generally be done every morning before putting on your shoes. The old rubbing-the-toes-on-the-back-of-your-trouser-leg trick also works, though it doesn’t deal with much other than the toes.

If you’re desperate, eat a banana. Then use the banana peel to give a temporary shine to your shoes. It’s not ideal, but it won’t damage the leather, being natural. Avoid any “quick shine” products as they normally contain silicone, which is effectively giving your shoes a plastic coating.

Situation: Popped a shirt button
What to do: Use a safety pin. What do you mean you don’t carry a safety pin? Well find one and use it to fasten the shirt, making sure that both ends of the pin lie flat against the shirt.

Situation: Spilled wine on yourself
What to do: Using a dry white napkin, soak up as much liquid as possible from the surface before it’s absorbed, then dab on cold water so the stain stays damp and doesn’t set. Never rub. If the stain is on a suit or tie, ask someone to recommend a good dry cleaner and go immediately. If it is on a shirt, put straight in the wash.

Situation: Your zipper is stuck
What to do: Check to make sure no fabric is caught; if it is, try pulling the zipper up and then down again. Finally, rub the tip of a graphite pencil along the zipper. Graphite powder is a great dry lubricant.

Situation: Static cling
What to do: Find a wire hanger in a nearby coat closet and rub it along the clingy area; the metal will remove the charge.

And one more non-clothing tip…

Situation: Bad breath in the middle of a party
What to do: Find a glass of water and a lemon. Squeeze as much of the lemon into the water as you can. Either drink it or, if you’re hidden away in a corner somewhere, gargle it.
Next week, some general maintenance tips for your suits…

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The Allure of Corthay Shoes

Pierre Corthay is one of the best shoemakers around, but is not well-known outside France. Trained at both John Lobb and Berluti, he has a pedigree from possibly the two most respected shoemakers in the world, for quality and design respectively.

Like Berluti, he has used some innovative marketing and eye-catching designs to gain attention across France. And he has gradually acquired stockists in Japan, Germany and the USA (Leffot and Bergdorf Goodman). If he were owned by the giant LVMH, he’d probably be as big as Berluti already.

I like Corthay shoes because they are sleek without being pointy (cf. Artioli), have a lovely patina without being over the top (cf. Berluti), and are universally renowned to have great construction (again, cf. Berluti).

I wore my pair, probably inadvisably, in torrential rain in London recently. They coped very well, without a stain on them and no signs of damage. In fact, come to think of it, they had had a few spots of rain on a previous occasion and there were no marks that time either.

I hasten to add that on neither occasion did I submit the shoes to this treatment on purpose. But as an assistant in the Gaziano & Girling showroom told me that day, “you wouldn’t want to be wearing a pair of Berlutis on a day like this.”

A look at the website (www.corthay.fr) illustrates the Corthay taste for the extreme. Neon-orange leathers and turquoise two-tones are always going to stand out from the crowd. But I am informed that 90% of the shoes they sell are still black or brown.

What blacks and browns though. Highlights are the two-holed derbies with elongated tongue, which look great in smart and clean shades, and the suede-and-calf combinations – a modern take on the traditional business model. I opted for a brown version of the black two-tones illustrated (colour shown in the magnified image).

Having trained at Lobb in 1984 and become the senior craftsman at Berluti in 1985, Corthay opened his own store in 1990. Five years later a contract for 150 bespoke pairs from the Sultan of Brunei kick-started the business, which added a ready-to-wear in 2001. A tricky experience with a subcontractor led the company to start doing its own ready-to-wear and opening its own factory in 2003.

Today, Corthay probably competes with Aubercy for the reputation of the best-respected shoemaker in France. I highly recommend a look next time you are in New York (Leffot, Bergdorf Goodman) or, indeed, are strolling down Rue Volney in Paris.

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