The Best Method For Folding Your Dress Pants To Avoid Wrinkles When Traveling

For many of us, going on a trip is our opportunity to live out our fashion fantasies. You're in a new, dreamy romantic place. It's the perfect opportunity to break out of your home routine and dress to match the vibe. You don't know anyone and you can pretend to be whoever you want. But there is one thing that can ruin all your style aspirations — packing improperly. There is nothing worse than unpacking your favorite clothes to find them wrinkled to bits, unpresentable to the public eye.

For every type of garment, whether it's a dress or dress shirt, there is a specific method to folding and packing them so they stay wrinkle-free. One of the trickiest designs to fold properly is dress pants. But don't worry, with our advice, you'll be able to strut through your vacation wearing slacks that look fresh out of the dry cleaners.

If you're not going to use a garment bag, then you're going to tackle the task of folding your dress pants into your suitcase alongside the rest of your things. To do so, you'll first want to iron out or steam your pants so they don't have any wrinkles or folds to begin with. From there you'll want to lie your pants out onto a completely flat, smooth surface like a wood floor or table. Many people will make the mistake of folding their pants at the zipper point. However, this is an easy way to walk yourself into wrinkles.

Instead, you'll want to grab the two loops in the center of the backside of your trousers and the two loops in the center of the back of your trousers. By pulling these pairs of loops apart from one another you will create a perfect fold down the center of the pant, with the outer side of the leg pressed flat. You'll want to ensure that the hem aligns in a straight line. Then you'll fold over the hem towards the waistband, flattening the fabric each time you crease the pant leg.

If you really want to ensure your clothing stays neat and pristine, your best bet at doing so is to get a garment bag. This is a type of suitcase specifically designed for carrying and protecting dress clothes during travel or storage. Typically longer and narrower than regular luggage and equipped with hooks, a garment bag gives your clothes the space to hang. While you can hang dress pants in a garment bag, there is usually not enough space for you to hang them from a clips hanger.

If you're going to hang your dress pants in a garment bag, you'll still have to fold them properly. To do so, you'll follow the same instructions mentioned previously in order to fold your pants horizontally. However, rather than folding them vertically to the waistband, you will simply fold them in half, placing the hem on one side of the hanger bar and the waistband on the other.