Packing a suitable wardrobe for a cruise holiday can be a challenging task – as you need to have the appropriate clothes for evening dining, daytime on the ship and stop-offs at the various ports, while also remembering that you chosen clothes will need to be fitted into very limited wardrobe space in your room on the ship. Perhaps the best way of managing these conflicting requirements is to try to minimise any unnecessary outfits – by recycling what you wear.

While you cannot afford to be seen wearing the same clothes every day, with the correct planning, that won’t be necessary. Working with the example of a week long cruise through a warm weather region, with three stop-offs at ports, three days at sea and one evening following embarkation, you will need nine outfits for daytime use and seven for dinner in the evenings. From this point, you can begin to find ways of bending the rules.

When it comes to clothes for dinner times, there will generally be two formal dining nights and five casual ones during the course of a cruise lasting a week. The same dinner suit can be used for both of the formal nights, while some judicious variance between a couple of shirts, pairs of trousers and jackets, means you will not require more than this to cover the other five nights. By combining these in subtly different fashion, it will appear to most that you are wearing different outfits each night.

For those clothes worn during the daytime, sometimes the same shirts can be utilised for day and evening use, but you will require a slightly greater number of shirts for the days – say five in total – as these will be used for longer at a time, during periods when you are more physically active. With both daytime and evening clothes, the most important part is the top half, as this is the part more people will notice.