A hanger is a load-bearing device and most of them are the wrong shape

What hanging actually does to a garment

A hanging garment is suspended from its shoulders, so the whole mass of the cloth below pulls down through the fabric at the top. On a heavy winter coat that is a real load, and it is concentrated wherever the hanger makes contact.

If the hanger is the right width and shape the load is spread across the shoulder line and the garment simply hangs as it was cut. If it is too narrow the load lands on two points inside the shoulder, and the fabric there is stretched continuously for as long as the coat is in the wardrobe.

The effect is slow and cumulative and it is why hanging damage is often blamed on wear. A coat that has developed odd shoulder bumps rarely got them from being worn.

Width and shape, in that order

A hanger should be as wide as the garment's shoulders and no wider. Too narrow and the garment droops off the ends with the load concentrated inboard; too wide and it stretches the shoulder outward and can push a distinct point into the cloth at each end.

Shape is the second requirement. A shoulder is not a straight line, it slopes and curves, so a flat wire triangle contacts the garment at two edges rather than along a surface. Contoured hangers with some depth follow the curve and spread the pressure over a much larger area.

Depth is what wire hangers lack entirely, and it is why they mark garments. The thin gauge of the wire concentrates the load into a line, and the load has nowhere to go but into the cloth.

Different garments want different treatment

Structured tailoring is the best case for hanging. A jacket has a built shoulder with padding and canvas that supports itself, and hanging on a broad contoured hanger is exactly how it is meant to be stored. Coats are the same, only heavier, so the hanger needs to be stronger and wider still.

Knitwear is the worst case and should not be hung at all. A knit has no internal structure, its loops deform under sustained load, and the weight of the body of a jumper concentrates at two points on the shoulders. That produces the small pointed distortions everyone recognises. Fold knitwear flat.

Trousers can be hung either from the waistband with clips or folded over a bar. Hanging by the hem with clips uses gravity to keep the leg straight, which suits a crease, though clips can mark delicate cloth. Bias-cut and heavy draped garments deform if hung for long periods because the weight pulls the bias out of shape.

Crowding is a separate problem

A packed rail compresses everything on it. Cloth that is crushed against its neighbours for months takes on permanent creases, and structured garments lose their shape at the sleeve head and the lapel roll because there is no room for them to sit as cut.

Air matters too. A tightly packed wardrobe holds moisture and, if anything has been put away damp, mildew has an environment. It also keeps garments from airing between wearings, which is the main thing that reduces how often they need washing.

Leaving a hand's width between hangers sounds precious and is simply how much space a garment needs to hang in its own shape. If that means the wardrobe holds fewer things, that is genuine information about the wardrobe.

Between wearings, hang before you put away

A garment that has been worn is slightly damp and slightly out of shape. Hanging it on a broad hanger somewhere with moving air for a few hours lets the moisture leave and lets wool in particular relax back into its shape, which is a large part of why wool garments recover from creasing on their own.

Putting a worn garment straight into a full wardrobe traps that moisture against its neighbours, sets creases in whatever position it was crushed into, and, over a season, is one of the things that makes clothes smell stale without ever having a specific stain.

This one habit does more to reduce washing than any product. Less washing means less agitation, which is what actually consumes clothing.

Long-term storage is a different set of rules

For anything going away for months, the priorities change. Everything must be clean, because soil and body residues attract insects and can set into permanent stains. Everything must be dry. And plastic dry cleaning bags should come off, since they trap moisture and can hold solvent residue.

Breathable cotton covers protect from dust and light while letting air through. Heavy items are better folded in a box than left hanging for a year under their own weight, and folds are worth padding or refolding at least once so a crease does not set into a permanent line.

Where wool is involved, all of this overlaps with keeping insects out, and the sequence is the same: clean first, dry thoroughly, then seal or cover. The hanger question and the moth question turn out to have the same answer at the storage end.