There is a category of clothing I have started buying almost exclusively, and it is not defined by brand or price. It is things that improve.

Most of what is sold to us is at its best in the shop. That is the whole design brief: look excellent under a spotlight, on a hanger, unworn. Then it goes home with you and every wash takes something away.

A smaller set of things works the other way. Leather softens and takes the shape of you. Good cotton relaxes and gets better against skin. Linen crumples into something that looks lived in rather than neglected. Denim fades exactly where you sit and bend, which is to say it becomes a record of you.

That is a much better thing to spend money on than newness, and it is also the honest answer to buying less. You buy less when the things you own keep getting more comfortable to wear.

Wool and cashmere age well when the fibre is long and the yarn is plied, and badly when it is neither.

What that means in a shop: two-ply or heavier yarn resists pilling far better than single-ply, and a tight, dense knit outlasts a loose fluffy one even though the fluffy one feels nicer for the first week. Merino is the workhorse and takes daily wear. Cashmere is warmer for the weight and needs more care. Alpaca has almost no memory, so it drapes beautifully and will not spring back into shape.

Care, which is genuinely half of it: wash less than you think, always cool, always flat to dry. Fold, never hang, or the shoulders stretch into little points. Buy a cashmere comb and use it after the third or fourth wear, before the pills lock together.

The wool tailoring in this group is the longest-lived thing here. A wool jacket that gets brushed and rested between wears will outlast almost anything else you own.

Silk, cotton and linen are the fibres that get more comfortable and slightly less pristine, which is the trade.

Silk is stronger than it looks and hates two things: sunlight and deodorant. It also does not need dry cleaning in most cases, and gentle hand washing in cool water with a little conditioner keeps it far softer than solvent does. Expect the colour to shift slightly. That is normal.

Cotton and linen both soften permanently and both shrink once. Buy with that in mind, wash before you judge the fit, and stop ironing linen if you want to enjoy owning it.

Leather and suede are the clearest case of all, and the rules are short. Keep them dry, condition smooth leather once or twice a year, brush suede after every wear, and let both rest rather than wearing the same piece daily. A leather skirt or a suede boot treated that way looks better at five years than at five weeks. Untreated, it cracks at the fold points and there is no coming back.