Packing a carry-on out of three of our sections

Our own banner says comfy to travel free, which is the kind of line that survives no contact with an actual suitcase. So we tried it: seven days, one carry-on, nothing outside our yoga and lounge pants, our linen trousers and our oversized tops. Three sections, 57 of our 78 pages, no jacket and no shoes.

What works

Wide leg trousers with a drawstring pack better than jeans by a wide margin. They roll flat, they weigh a third as much, and the creases they pick up in a bag are the same creases they pick up sitting down, so nobody can tell where you have been. Two pairs covered the week because one of them was dark.

The oversized tops do double duty because the cut hides a wrinkle. A fitted shirt out of a suitcase looks slept in. A loose one looks the same as it did on the hanger, which is a property of the pattern rather than anything clever we did to the cloth.

The washing part, where we got it backwards

The instinct is to pack the linen for a trip where you plan to rinse things in a sink. On our range that is the wrong way round, and it is worth spelling out because the labels do not.

Our linen cuts are 70% rayon and 30% linen. Rayon holds water, gives up a lot of its strength while wet, and cannot go in a dryer, so a pair rinsed at night is still damp at breakfast. Meanwhile the yoga and lounge pants nobody thinks of as travel clothing are 90% polyester and 10% spandex, and polyester is the fastest drying thing we make by a distance. Rinse, roll in a towel, press down hard, hang overnight, done. Our tunic tees sit at 65% polyester and behave the same way.

So the wash as you go pair is a lounge trouser and a poly tee. The linen is what you pack when there is a laundry at the other end.

Where it falls apart

Two gaps, and neither is fixable from these pages. We make no outerwear at all. Our sweatshirts are knit pullovers, which is a layer and not a coat, so anything below about 60 degrees needs a jacket from somewhere else. And there is nothing here you would wear to a restaurant with a dress code, unless your definition of dress code is generous. We would rather say that than pretend an oversized tee is a going out shirt.

One packing note about sizing

If you are ordering specifically to travel, err toward the drawstring and smocked waist cuts. Feet swell on long flights, bodies change over a week of restaurant food, and a tie handles both without you thinking about it. It also means the waist row in the table is a starting point rather than a wall, which is not true of the fixed elastic cuts.