FABRIC CONDITIONING

Garments purchasable at TheRake.com

It is galling, most readers will agree, to take a much cherished suit to a high street outlet and hand over hard currency to have its fabric’s natural oils ravaged by perchloroethylene: equivalent, no less, to paying a DNA-cloned, pre-opposable-thumbs Homo erectus equipped with sharpened stick to service a mechanical timepiece inherited from a beloved relative. It’s also a nuisance that a common ritual, on arriving at a hotel, has become hanging whatever suits you’ve packed with you close to a steaming hot shower to remove the suitcase-inflicted wrinkles.

So the world of menswear emitted a collective cheer of relief and joy when Z Zegna announced the imminent release of its Techmerino Wash & Go collection, a selection of garments that are available at . For those late to the party, we’re talking here about machine-washable — yes, machinewashable — suits that won’t require ironing once they’ve dried. The destructiveness of dry cleaning and the laboriousness of pressing made redundant in one stroke of ingenuity. And not only are these garments