The Care Guide: Making Essentials Last a Decade

The fastest way to ruin a £42 tee is to treat it like a £6 tee. The reverse is also true: a few small adjustments to how you wash, dry and store your clothes can extend their useful life by years. We asked our mill in Portugal, our pattern cutter in Porto, and a friend who runs a dry cleaner in Hackney for their honest, unfussy advice. Here are the seven things they kept repeating.

01 — Wash less.

Most of what we put in the wash doesn't need to be there. A wool jumper worn once with a t-shirt underneath? Air it out overnight. Trousers worn for a day at a desk? Steam and hang. Even tees can usually be worn two or three times before they really need washing.

Every wash cycle is a small assault on fabric. Less washing means longer life. Less washing also means less water, less detergent, less microfibre pollution.

02 — Wash cold.

30°C is fine for almost everything. Hot water shrinks cotton, sets stains permanently, and breaks down dye fixatives. The only reason to wash hot is if there's a hygiene issue (sickness, bedsheets, baby clothes). Otherwise, save the energy.

03 — Wash inside out.

The friction of the wash cycle is what causes pilling, fading, and the loss of that velvety hand on a good piece of cotton. Wash inside out — especially sweats, long sleeves, and anything dyed dark — and you'll preserve the outside surface for years longer.

Most of what we put in the wash doesn't need to be there.

04 — Skip the dryer where you can.

The tumble dryer is the single worst thing in your laundry routine. It cooks fabric, shrinks fibres, and breaks down the structure of anything with stretch in it. Hang dry where you possibly can. If you must use the dryer, low heat only.

05 — Iron inside out, while damp.

A warm iron on the inside of a slightly damp tee will restore it almost completely. The heat through the fabric is gentler. Steam is even better — it reshapes fibres without crushing them. A handheld garment steamer is the single best £40 you'll spend.

06 — Store on wide hangers.

Wire hangers from the dry cleaner ruin shoulders. So do thin wooden ones. Use shaped, wide-shouldered hangers for anything tailored — jumpers, overshirts, trousers — and fold tees and sweats rather than hanging them. Hung knitwear stretches at the shoulder and never fully recovers.

07 — Repair small things early.

A loose button, a thread coming through a seam, a small snag in the cuff — these are five-minute jobs that prevent five-hundred-pound replacements. A basic sewing kit (£8 from any haberdasher) and ten minutes of attention will save you from throwing away a £180 overshirt because the elbow gave up.

The principle behind all of this.

Clothes are infrastructure. They're meant to support a life, not be the centre of it. The less attention they demand, the better they're doing their job. And the easiest way to reduce that attention is to start with pieces built to last — and then treat them, gently, as if they will.