Garment Bag

Make sure your suits arrive looking less rumpled than you do

Rolling your clothes into a ball and stuffing them in a suitcase sounds easy enough. Until
you have to spend your entire trip ironing out all those wrinkles. To keep your duds
ready-to-wear, pack them in a garment bag.

Material: Ballistic nylon.

Size: 50 inches high, 24 inches wide, 4 ½ inches deep.
Frame: Honeycomb.
Exterior: Several pockets of varying sizes.
Closure: Zipper, size 10.
Structure: Collapsible.
Mobility: Straps and wheels.

Material: The Denier number on a piece of luggage refers to the quality of the nylon—
the higher the number, the stronger the fabric. Many retail luggage stores sell suitcases
with Denier numbers between 1050 and 1500. Any fabric with a Denier number of 1050
or higher is referred to as ballistic. Here’s why you should go ballistic: regardless of the
nylon strength, your bag can still be punctured or torn. Strong nylon will keep the hole at
its original dimensions, but weak nylon won’t. Much like a run in your wife’s nylon
stockings, the tear will get progressively larger.

Size: A garment bag should hold about four or five suits with a little room to spare. That
extra room is what will keep them from wrinkling. Resist the urge to squeeze in another
suit.

Frame: The frame keeps the size and shape of the garment bag intact. If you examine the
edges of the bag you should be able to feel a rod on the sides. Many frames are made of
aluminum or plastic, both of which tend to weaken over time. The best suitcases have
frames made of honeycomb, which is extremely durable. Those worker bees know what
they’re doing.

Exterior: The pockets should be made out of the same material as the rest of the bag.
Avoid mesh—it tends to tear easily. Make sure the pockets are easy to reach and close
securely with Velcro or a zipper. Your garment bag is going to do hard time in the
storage areas of planes, trains and automobiles, so make sure all pockets are completely
closed.

Zipper: Luggage zippers usually run from sizes 6 to 10, and a size-10 zipper is easiest to
grip, which is about the size of a thimble.

Structure: The bag should be flexible enough to fold in half easily. It’s also a nice plus
to have a loop on the bottom of the bag that can be snapped onto the hangars to keep the
bag securely folded.
Mobility: Wheels and a strap are the simplest way of carting your bag around without
carrying it over your shoulder. For those times when you want a workout, make sure
there’s an extra carrying strap.

User Tips

Packin’ It In: It’s a fact of life—no matter how well you pack, your clothes will
still wrinkle. But you can launch a preemptive strike: layer a plastic dry-cleaning bag
between each easily-wrinkled item. Fabric against plastic won’t wrinkle nearly as much
as fabric against fabric. Even better, have your clothes dry-cleaned before your trip and
leave them in the plastic bags. They’ll stay fairly neat and should just need a touch-up
with the iron.