The British used to admire the French for their chic clothes, and the Americans who always looked as if they were wearing new, uncreased clothes, despite travelling to the UK on long flights, often overnight. What are travellers' style secrets?
American Throwaway, and New Bulk-buy
When I first went to the USA I was astonished how cheaply you could buy t-shirts. In the south and Caribbean, stalls were offering cheap t-shirts or two for the price of one or special deals on three. I concluded that the reason why Americans looked as if they were wearing new clothes was that they were wearing new clothes.
Laundry
For a special occasion, a celebration lunch or dinner, you can buy an inexpensive item and keep it in its packaging. Alternatively, if you've worn it on the journey, send it to the hotel laundry. If you hotel's laundry is too expensive, you might be able to find a local laundry shop by looking in the local directory in your hotel bedside table or desk, or just use your phone or the free computer terminal in the hall of the hotel.
Cleaning and Ironing
Ask hotel staff if the hotel has a washing machine or iron for guests. Some hotels hide the iron at the back of the wardrobe, have a washing machine hidden in the basement or up on the 4th floor. Ask. Alternatively, housekeeping will send you an iron and ironing board, usually supplied only to the suites but often supplied to any guest who asks.
If your hotel provides a valet service for a suite, or a club lounge, the staff may be able to advise or organise washing or pressing of an item.
Larger hotels offer a laundry service. Hostels and budget hotels often have a laundry room.
In-flight Clothes Change
A PR girl for a travel company taught me her trick for looking good on arrival off a flight. She travels with a spare lightweight outfit to wear on board. She greets her group at the airport in a tailored business suit. Immediately after boarding she changed into loose onesie for sleeping. Arriving overseas in the morning, she changed back into the business suit.
If you are a frequent flyer the airline personnel often offer to hang up your coat. This keeps it pristine and crease free. Less chance of dropping your tray dinner all over it.
If the flight is less than full, you have more chance that the crew will offer to do you favours even if you are travelling in Economy. Especially if you tell them that you are travelling to a wedding or a new job or you have a reason for wanting to look smartly dressed.
If you are buying souvenirs for family, consider buying two (or more) t-shirts, one as a gift for somebody, the other to wear on holiday, or two as gifts, or two to wear on holiday, and negotiate a price for buying more than one. The same obviously applies to other clothing, sandals. If you have a partner who has nothing to do while you are at a business meeting, sports event or conference, and they like shopping, you can occupy them by asking them to organise laundry or better still sending them to buy clothes.
Colour Co-ordination
Either co-ordinate colours with yourself, or what is available.You can pay to have a company choose your colours - known in some systems as spring, summer, autumn and winter colours. But holding colours against your skin or hair or eyes or lipstick or shoes or coat will often show you which basic colours or accessory colours suit you.
In China red is a favourite colour. You could match your company colours, or go for your football team's colours.
Fitted Clothes
A neater look is created by wearing fitted clothes. A loose garment can be tightened by wearing a belt. You could use a long scarf as a belt. Or turn the garment inside out, create a seam up both of the sides with a couple safety pins. If you have time loosely sew the seam with the hotel sewing kit. If you don't have a sewing kit in your room, ask for one. Or if none is available, a member of the hotel staff, or another guest might be able to lend you a needle and cotton.
Make sure the garment is still loose enough to pull over your head.
French girls, on casual occasions, as tourists, or on the beach, sometimes tie the lower corners of a causal shirt into a bow, making it fit across the bust.
Matching Colours
In the UK, the 99p shop and Pound World sell slippers in colours. You can co-ordinate bedroom slippers with your night clothes or casual wear. Either one pair. Or even matching slippers for two or more pairs of pyjamas or night dresses or wraps.
Wraps For Beach and Bedroom
A long scarf doubles as a beach sarong. A light wrap around dressing gown does for both beach and hotel wear.
One one occasion I forgot to pack pyjamas, so I wore the hotel dressing gown in bed. It was warm and the bedroom was air conditioned.
I found the belt was uncomfortable. But I was glad to be dressed when I had to rush to the door on hearing knocking. I found a man delivering the early breakfast I'd ordered before my dawn flight home.
Crease-free
The three ways of having crease free clothing are:
1 Buy new at home
2 Buy new at destination
3 Send to laundry
4 DIY ironing
5 Wash garment and hang it to and drip dry in shower room steam
6 Invest in outfits of synthetic non-crease fabrics. Poly-Cotton is a compromise, cool enough, yet relatively little creasing.
7 Hang everything immediately.
8 Pack clothes on thin hangers, the sort you get from dry cleaning shops. If you don't have enough, you can buy them, or pick up spares from other people, or even shops.
Travelling Light
You can buy jackets with multiple pockets designed for photographers, sports, and people on airlines with luggage restrictions.
Alternatively add pockets to the inside of your own shirts, a jacket, even a T-shirt. Pockets can be expensive to buy. You can make pockets from old garments.
Pockets
A shirt with a frayed collar and cuffs still provides a ready-made breast pocket you can cut off, cuffs which can be seemed and reversed. A too-small child's uniform had pockets in the jacket for mother's jacket. Old trousers (USA readers - trousers are pants) and jeans also have pairs of pocket.
I invested in dressed which can be worn three or more ways. I find long skirts which pull up to make a dress with a halter neck strap work well. However, many of the wear six ways dresses require a slim figure which looks good in very tight or very folded clothing. the fabrics are often thin, flimsy and cheap and easily crease, dull or day-glow colours.
Reversible jackets
You can buy reversible clothes for men, women and children. I have a permanent search on eBay for reversible everything, reversible skirts, reversible dresses, reversible jackets, reversible scarves, reversible belts, reversible pendants, reversible bracelets, reversible stone rings.
A jacket which reversed to black seemed dull and boring on the black side. I don't wear black at night. I want to be seen when crossing the road. So I wore only the coloured side - until I arrived at a funeral. Everybody was in black, about five hundred people, an entire church full of black, only little me in bright patchwork! I 'accidentally' dropped my hymn book, removed my jacket, sat up again and replaced it, now wearing black. I found myself muttering a short prayer, 'Thank you, God, for my reversible jacket.'
Happy Travelling!
Companies offering reversibles
UK JD Williams and catalogues in the same group of companies
Asia - many Chinese jackets are reversible, lined with silk. Even if they are not sold as reversible, you can reverse them. You may wish to remove the conspicuous white inside neck label, cover it with a piece of coloured ribbon, or wear a neck scarf which hides the label.
Reversible Jackets For Men
marksandspencer.com
landsend.co.uk
jdwilliams.co.uk - I saw a festival jacket in the 2015 summer sale at £34.
Cheaper items in the USA from aliexpress.com
Pockets in jackets
Ski wear usually has lots of pockets.
ayegear.com - not cheap. £139.99. Loads of pockets.
Price Comparison
On eBay you can search and sort prices low to high, including postage.
On eBay you can put items into your cart and then compare prices before buying. On eBay if your watch list is full you can do a Collection for comparison, and fill in the price on the notes.
Several comparison sites bring up everything available in a search. These appear at the bottom of your screen when you are on eBay.
Idealprice.co.uk
Quality Checks
To get an overview of quality, you may have to search around. For example, you find something cheaper on Ebay than on Amazon, but you might find more customer feedback on Amazon or on the brand's website, or even a site which is out of stock in your size is still handy for customer reviews.
What could go wrong? A reversible dress may show the reverse below the on top colour. To me this is usual. You could put a string size ribbon or belt on the lining to hold it up.
The fabric could be too light or too heavy. Chiffon can be scratchy. Silk can range from tough to so lightweight that the seams tear. Decide if you want softly draping or robust. A plain colour might show stains. But you could cover them with muttons or patches, of flowers made from a piece of the hem.
A light-weight bag could be too light to carry heavy objects or tear easily at the seams or when sharp objects or corners project from heeled shoes or goods you place inside. Light four wheel luggage might not wheel easily over cobblestones, rough tarmac, bobbled paving at crossing supposed to help the blind but annoy anybody using wheels.
If you know this already and don't care, then the overall satisfaction rate might convince you that as you are not so fussy the item is a good buy, or good for the price, or good enough for one trip.
Angela Lansbury, travel writer, author, speaker.
See my other blog posts, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook. Please like my posts and follow me.
