After a decade of living out of travel backpacks, the Pack Hacker team gets a lot of questions about clothing: what do they actually wear, what's held up, and what's worth leaving behind? Now Lauren and Tom from the Pack Hacker team are answering your frequently asked questions and sharing exactly what's worked for them — and what hasn't — on the road.
Below, the pair chats about their take on the ever-popular capsule wardrobe, their tried and true travel clothing, how many pairs of underwear they pack (spoiler alert: it’s a surprisingly low number), and the fabric that makes packing light possible.
Lauren: We’ve talked a lot about capsule wardrobes over the years, and you’ve been wearing one for essentially 10 years at this point. Do you find them necessary?
Tom: For long-term travel, yes, because that’s how you pack less. If everything in your bag goes with everything else, then it’s super easy to pair things together and have variation when you have a limited number of clothing items.
What was the biggest difficulty in building that capsule wardrobe?
Veering away from black for me, I feel like I just wear black a lot because it’s so easy to match, and it’s so easy for those pieces to go with one another. But it got really wild when I started throwing like grays and blues in there. It was an identity crisis, really.
Rapid-fire–outfit, if you had to pick one. Top? Pants? Underwear? Socks? Belt? Shoes? Hat? Jacket? Hoodie?
These are my longtime go-tos:
- Top – Outlier Ultrafine Merino T-Shirt
- Pants – Outlier Slim Dungarees
- Underwear – Wool & Prince Boxer Briefs
- Socks – Anything from Darn Tough.
- Belt – Arcade Atlas
- Shoes – Vivobarefoot Ra IV
- Hat – Getaway or I twist up a Minus33 Neck Gaiter.
- Jacket – Patagonia Nano Puff
- Hoodie – Unbound’s Travel Hoodie
Most of those items are merino wool. Would you say that that’s the primary material that you look for when you’re looking for travel clothing?
Merino wool is definitely my go-to fabric for travel for a few reasons. One, it’s odor-resistant, so you can wear it a couple times between washes, which is great when you’re traveling, so you don’t have to just sit there and do laundry or overpack and pay more for checked luggage fees. That’s how I was able to travel for 2 years with just three t-shirts. In that same vein, it’s moisture wicking, too. So when you’re in different climates, you’re not as sweaty or it helps regulate your body temperature a little bit more. And then, Merino is naturally anti-wrinkle and super soft to the touch, so you always look good and stay comfortable.
You’ve had a lot of your merino wool items for a really long time. What’s one of the pieces that’s lasted and stayed a favorite the longest?
I’ve had my Unbound Merino hoodie in my bag consistently for like the past three years — or maybe four when we added it to our Digital Nomad Packing List. And every single year when we refresh that list, I get a whole new order of a bunch of new travel hoodies and through testing, that continues to be the reigning champ. It is the smallest packed hoodie, but it still keeps you warm and it’s made of merino wool, so it’s got all those great qualities that we had just discussed.
One of the major questions people have is how you actually wash that clothing when you’re on the road since you’re traveling with less items. What’s your process like?
One way is just by doing a lot of sink laundry. Depending on if I’m going to be a little more stationary or if I’m at an Airbnb or I have access to a laundromat, then sometimes I’ll bring a specific merino wool wash for my merino clothing. But otherwise, like Dr. Bronner works relatively well, too. It’s like a castile soap that can basically be used for everything.
I can travel with three pairs of underwear and that’s with help from the 1-1-1 rule. So basically I’m wearing one pair, I have one clean pair ready to go, and then one other pair that I’ve washed and is drying, and you just cycle between those three. So, it’s not gross cuz you’re just doing more washing, which is kind of annoying just in the sink or something like that with some Dr. Bronner liquid soap. However, it is a way to wear clean underwear every time. And if it’s made of merino, it’s just going to dry a lot faster, too. So, you’re basically going to be ready to go.
Because I travel with mostly Merino wool, I lay everything flat to dry, ideally. But you can get things like a portable clothes line just to hang up regular garments, but for merino, it can kind of stretch out a little bit, and because the fabric is a little more delicate, the lay flat drying is going to be where it’s at for those pieces. Just don’t put it directly in the sun. That could kind of degrade the garment a little bit faster. So, ideally in a shaded area outside with some good amount of breeze.
I know a lot of people’s concern with merino wool is the price. Do you think that it’s worth it?
For me, it’s definitely worth it. And I’ll bring up an example of when I was traveling for two years with three t-shirts in 2017. So, we just did the math on this, but during those two years, I wore each shirt what, like a little over 200 times, and it netted out to be about 60 cents per wear, which is more than cotton. But since I only had three shirts and I could wear them more between washes, it ended up being a lot cheaper because I wasn’t checking my bag. I was on a flight like every two weeks. So, I saved a ton of money on check luggage fees. I’m wearing some really nice soft and comfortable clothing that is odor-resistant and dries quickly and yeah, it was just overall worth it.
What are some of your favorite merino wool brands?
Unbound Merino, obviously. And then Wool & Prince is really up there for me. Mac on the West Coast is doing some really awesome stuff. Outlier based out of Brooklyn also they have some great staple pieces and some very high fashion pieces as well. So if that’s your thing, go check it out. We were just looking at the website before this. I feel like they constantly change that thing. It looks crazy. And then I think there’s like some classics too that have been around for a while. Like Minus33 is really good. Woolx is another one to check out. Icebreaker. A lot of these are more like that performance merino wool, though.
What brands like Unbound Merino have done is they’ve created a line of everyday wear out of Merino because with Merino, a lot of clothing has been like for more active wear. Like I used to wear a hoodie that was actually for runners and it looked like that. But I think Unbound does a really great job at having a whole line of just casual everyday wear. Unbound Merino has tees and hoodies and button-ups and all of their apparel is really versatile and timeless. All of their staple pieces work together really well to create a capsule wardrobe, so you don’t have to invest in new clothing every single season. Plus, they have a commitment to ethically sourcing from family-owned farms and paying garment workers a fair wage. So, if you want to pack lighter, head to Unbound Merino’s site to stock up on merino wool clothing before your next trip.