Clothing
In this article we go deep in clothes, with a few tips on what to carry, and details on what make some clothes much better than the others to travel with.
Using a layered system
The easiest way to travel light is to not carry too many items. For this and still look good, the best is to use high quality items that can match easily with each other. Over the last few years, a few companies have designed new products that combines good look and travel friendly features, which make things much easier.
In terms of fabric, avoiding cotton is usually best. The problems are that cottons items are heavy, and take forever to dry. The best fabrics are merino wool and synthetic. Merino wool keeps you hot when it’s cold, cold when it’s hot, and does not smell. For some items merino is not well suited or too expensive, and high quality synthetic items also have great properties, such as drying quickly, not needing ironing or being light.
Your clothes system
Four seasons
- Pants
- Shirt
- Pull light
- Pull heavy
- Underwear
- Socks
Winter specials
- Thermal
- Thermal underwear
- Fleece
- Socks
Rainy days
- Umbrella (optional)
- Jacket
- or you might just have a coffee at the local place and wait it out!
Pants
A few specific characteristics define what I consider as good travel pants:
- look good (because you want to wear them at this fancy restaurant),
- dry quickly (when you catch some rain),
- have pockets with zippers (to avoid items falling by accident and limit pickpocketing)
- are durable (you’re wearing them everyday)
The best travel pants I could find at the moment are the bluffs. My first pair lasted me two years, and it still very fine if a bit worn out, even if I only used that pair and travelled to 20+ countries during that period. I now own two pairs, to alternate, and they are still my only pants.
The Bluff pants
How many pairs do you need? For some, one pair is enough. If you don’t wear shorts, two pairs is more comfortable, if only to do laundry from time to time.
The question of hiking pants
In most cases, you don’t need them, especially if you chose a pair of pants with the criteria above. If you do long distance or very regular hiking (like several days a week), it might make sense. In that case, you want to avoid pants that look too technical, so as to be able to wear them in other settings. The zippered pockets still apply, it’s magic.
Technical pants are usually crazy expensive. A good balance I could find is the Rab Alpine Treck pants, but they seem to be discontinued. I might just stick with my other pants now…