How to pack a suit

One of the few occasions where I still take a carry-on roller bag is when I’m traveling either for business or for a wedding or funeral.  These situations typically require a suit and some dress clothes, so on these rare occurrences (and we’re talking maybe once a year), I cannot take my usual backpack.  I have tried in the past to cram a suit into my Patagonia sack.  Though I got it in there, it was all wrinkly when I pulled it out at my destination, so now I just bite the bullet and take the bigger bag.

One of my good friends recently asked my advice on how to pack a suit for travel, so today’s post describes just that.

 

Step 1:  Get a suit.  Preferably a clean one without wrinkles.

 

Step 2:  Put the suit in the clear plastic cover from the dry cleaner, or if you don’t have one of those, a very thin garment cover.  The bag from the dry cleaner is preferable because it’s so thin, but I don’t have one of those at the moment, so I used this:

 

Step 3:  Lay out your large roller suitcase and open it up.

 

Step 4:  Put the suit in.  Center the suit so that the middle part of it is at the bottom of the bag, like so:

 

Step 5:  Put the rest of your clothes and stuff on top of the suit.

 

Step 6:  Fold the top and bottom of the suit over onto your clothes.  This makes a suit burrito.  The suit is the tortilla shell while the rest of your clothes are the delicious beans, salsa, cheese, and hot sauce.  Mmm… burrito.

 

And that’s it!  Packing a suit in this manner prevents hard folds and creases, so when you unpack at your destination, you can hang it up wrinkle free.

Regarding the cotton dress shirt that invariably goes with the suit, I either put it in the garment bag on top of everything else, or I just fold it and put it in the suitcase.  I’ve found that no matter what I do, I end up having to iron the shirt anyway, so it doesn’t make much difference.

So remember:  lay the suit down first, put everything else on top, then fold it over.  Suit burrito.  Easy as that!