Dry clean less, brush more, and the suit lasts years

A natural-bristle clothes brush costs somewhere around $20 to $30. Kent make one in cherrywood that will outlive the suit, and probably you. Buy it before you buy anything else on this list, because two minutes with a brush after each wear does more for a jacket than four trips to the dry cleaner.

Most of what makes a suit look tired isn't a stain. It's grit. Street dust, ash from somebody else's cigarette, skin, whatever the pavement throws up at trouser-hem height. That grit works its way into the weave and then every time you move your arm, the particles saw at the wool. The fabric doesn't wear out where you think it does. It wears out where you never cleaned it.

Brush from the top down, in short strokes

Hang the jacket on a hanger, not on your arm. Work from the collar down, following the direction the nap lies, with short firm strokes rather than long sweeping ones. Do the shoulders properly, because that's where dust settles while it hangs. Then the collar and the back of the neck, where hair and product end up. Then the front of the trousers from thigh to hem.

Turn out every pocket while you're there. Receipts left in a jacket pocket overnight will bow the flap and, given a week, set a crease into the cloth that steam won't fully lift.

The whole thing takes less time than making coffee.

The hanger matters more than the wardrobe

Wire hangers from the cleaner are a disaster. They're too narrow, so the shoulder of the jacket hangs off the end of the hanger and over a few months you get a dimple in the sleevehead that no pressing will remove. You need a hanger with shaped, flared ends roughly 5cm thick at the shoulder. Wood is ideal. You'll pay $8 to $15 each for decent cedar ones, less for plain beech, and both work.

Hang the jacket unbuttoned. Hang the trousers from the cuff on a clamp hanger so gravity pulls the creases straight, or folded over a bar along the existing crease line if you'd rather.

And leave a hand's width between garments on the rail. A crammed wardrobe crushes everything in it and stops air moving, which matters for the next part.

Give it a day off

Wool absorbs a surprising amount of moisture from your body over eight hours, and the fibres lose their springiness while they're damp. Hang the suit somewhere with air around it — not back in the wardrobe immediately, and not on a radiator — and leave it 24 hours before it goes back in the rotation. Give it 48 if you can.

This is the real argument for owning two suits instead of one good one. Not variety. Recovery time. A suit worn every day of the week will look shabby in a year. The same suit worn twice a week will still look right in five.

Worth knowing: if you're buying a suit you'll wear hard, ask whether you can get a second pair of trousers. The trousers wear out at roughly twice the rate of the jacket, because you sit on them. On a suit you intend to keep, a spare pair is the cheapest way to double its life.

Steam, don't iron

A handheld steamer runs about $30 to $60 and it's the tool that replaces most dry cleaning. Steam relaxes the wool fibres and lets creases drop out under their own weight. Hold the head an inch or two off the cloth, move steadily, and let the jacket hang and dry for twenty minutes before you wear it.

The free version: hang the suit in the bathroom while you shower, door shut, for fifteen minutes. It won't touch a sharp crease but it will sort out the general rumpled look after a train journey.

If you must use an iron, use a press cloth. A clean cotton tea towel, slightly damp, between the iron and the wool. Iron directly onto worsted wool at any real heat and you'll glaze it, which is the shiny flattened patch you've seen on cheap suits. Glazing is permanent. Once the fibres are crushed flat they don't come back.

Dealing with what lands on you

Blot, don't rub. Always. A white cotton cloth, pressed straight down, working from the outside of the mark inwards so you don't spread it.

For most fresh spills, cold water on the cloth is enough. For oil and grease, cover the mark with a little cornflour or talc and leave it for an hour to draw the oil out before you brush it off. Don't reach for a stain-remover pen on wool. Those are designed for cotton shirts and the solvent can lift the dye.

Red wine on a dark suit will usually vanish with cold water and patience. Red wine on a light gray suit is a job for the professional, and the sooner you get it there the better, because a set stain is a different problem from a fresh one. Tell them what it was. Cleaners treat protein, tannin and oil differently, and guessing costs them their best shot at it.

Moths eat the clean bits last

Clothes moth larvae are after the keratin in wool, but what draws the adult moth in is body soil — sweat, skin oil, food residue. A suit put away dirty is bait. A suit put away brushed and aired is a much less interesting proposition.

Bin the plastic sleeve the dry cleaner gives you. It traps solvent fumes and moisture against the cloth and can yellow light fabrics over a season. For summer storage use a breathable cotton garment bag, cedar blocks in the wardrobe, and sand the cedar lightly once a year to reopen the pores. Pheromone traps in the corner of the wardrobe will tell you whether you actually have a problem or are just being careful.

Vacuum the wardrobe floor and the dark corners now and then. That's where the larvae live, not on the rail.

How often to actually clean it

Common tailoring advice is a couple of times a year for a suit in regular rotation, or when it's visibly soiled or genuinely smells. Dry-cleaning solvent strips the natural oils out of wool and every cycle ages the cloth a little. The press is often worse than the solvent: an automatic press will flatten the roll of the lapel and squash the shape a tailor built into the chest.

So when you do go, ask for hand finishing, and ask them not to press the lapel flat. Some cleaners will charge a few pounds more for it. Pay it.

And always clean the jacket and trousers together, even if only the trousers are dirty. Otherwise they fade at different rates and in two years you'll own two garments that don't quite match.

Go and look at the seat of the trousers you wore yesterday, under a bright lamp, held at an angle. If there's a faint shine coming up, that's the wool being crushed flat by a chair you sit in for nine hours. You can slow it. You can't reverse it. Buy the second pair of trousers.