How to Care for Wool Tailoring: Pressing, Resting, Repairing

We build garments to be worn, kept, and repaired — clothing as commitment rather than consumption. But longevity is a partnership: the atelier provides the construction, and you provide the care. The good news is that wool asks for very little, as long as what you give it is the right thing. Here is what we tell every client who leaves Rue Jacob with a tailored piece.

Wool Cleans Itself — Let It

Wool fibre is naturally antibacterial and odour-resistant; it sheds wrinkles and smells with nothing more than air. After a day's wear, hang your jacket or trousers on a proper hanger near an open window for a few hours. This single habit replaces the majority of cleaning a wool garment will ever need.

Dry cleaning, by contrast, is chemistry — and repeated chemistry strips wool of its natural lanolin, dulls the fibre, and stresses the canvas. Limit dry cleaning to once or twice a year, or after a genuine accident. A garment that is brushed and aired needs remarkably little else.

The Brush Is Your Most Important Tool

Dust and dried particles are what actually wear wool out — they act as an abrasive inside the weave. A soft natural-bristle brush, used for thirty seconds after wear (downward strokes, following the nap), removes them before they can cut fibre. It is the least glamorous ritual in menswear and the most effective one.

Rest Days Are Construction Days

A canvassed jacket moulds to your body — that is the point of the hand-stitched canvas. But the moulding happens during rest, when the wool's natural memory lets it recover its shape and release moisture. Give tailoring at least a full day between wears, on a wide-shouldered hanger that supports the canvas. Two identical trousers worn alternately will outlast three worn carelessly.

Steam, Never Iron

A hot iron applied directly to wool flattens the weave and glazes the surface. Steam — from a steamer, or a shower's ambient humidity — relaxes wrinkles while preserving the cloth's body. If you must press, always through a cotton cloth, and never press a lapel flat: the roll of a lapel is shaped by hand and should stay rounded.

Storage: Where Garments Age Well or Badly

• Space: crushed shoulders take a set. Leave air between hangers.
• Moths: cedar and lavender deter; only cleanliness protects. Moths eat where wear and food traces are — brush and air before storing.
• Season's end: clean if needed, then store in a breathable cotton garment bag — never plastic, which traps moisture and invites mildew.
• Trousers: hang by the hem or cuff, full length. The weight of the wool presses them for you.

Repair Is Part of the Design

A loose button, an opened seam, a shine at the elbow — none of these are the end of a garment's life; they are its middle. Because our pieces are constructed with generous inlays and hand-finished seams, they are made to be altered and repaired as bodies and years change. Our approach to sustainability rests on exactly this: the most responsible garment is the one still being worn in ten years.

If a piece of ours needs attention — or a piece you love needs a second opinion — book an appointment at the atelier. And if you are building a wardrobe designed to last from the start, begin with our ready-to-wear collection, cut in wools chosen for how they age as much as how they look.