It often seems that no matter how hard you try, your carefully folded clothes packed away into your case before you left for your holiday, somehow arrive looking ten years older and entirely unwearable. This has considerable impact on the smart evening out to a classy restaurant that you were planning for your first evening. So is it possible to arrive with your clothes looking presentable? How do some people manage to arrive, unpack and immediately have a full wardrobe of presentable clothes? Is it magic?

There are several very effective tips to bear in mind if you would like to become one of the smug tourists that sees to arrive unscathed by the experience of the journey itself, and have a clean, uncreased and wearable array of clothes without having to spend the first day of your holiday wearing an odd combination of clothes which look as though you travelled in the baggage compartment yourself.

A good tip is to think in advance of the type of clothing you'll actually need (rather than the outfits you'd like to show off). Think about the materials as well - obviously some travel better than others. Cotton is a definite no, because as you will almost certainly know, it tends to crease very easily. Nylon and polyester, the manufactured fabrics, tend to crease far less, and lend themselves much better for travelling. Wool travels well, but is very bulky, and so is not advisable. Instead, a couple of polyester or nylon tops with a jacket will give you just as much warmth, but with less bulk and more flexibility.

Another secret kept by those who travel professionally is not to fold your clothes at all. Instead, rolling them keeps them very much better and makes it much easier to pack as well. Lay your tops out flat, and then carefully roll them together into a tube, keeping it as tight as you can. You'll find that the resulting tube can be squashed into your bag very easily, yet at the other end, when you unpack hem, they will be relatively unscathed, and ready for wearing.

Another, increasingly popular tip is to use a compressor. If you haven't yet seen one of these, they are basically a combination of plastic bag and small vacuum cleaner. You lay your clothes in the plastic bag, and zip it up. A small air pump is then connected to a valve on the side of the bag, and the air is extracted. This drastically reduces the overall volume of the clothing, meaning that they take up a lot less room in your case. It also means that the clothes will be virtually uncreasable, and when the bag is opened at the other end, the clothes will be in the same condition they were when you packed them.

The one thing to bear in mind when using these compressors of course is that at the other end of your holiday, you will need to do the same thing if you are to get all of your things back into a tightly packed case. This may well require an electric socket, and this in turn may require you to have a suitable adaptor.