It seems obvious to say that you should wear your clothes. That’s what they’re for, isn’t it? However, there’s an understandable temptation to preserve and protect certain items, pieces that you’ve spent a lot of money on or that you hope will for ever look as good as they did the day you bought them. Personally, I’ve always taken a different approach; that to love something is to use it and to use it often. To watch it age, change, fall apart and be repaired. Clothes, like most things, shouldn’t be preserved in aspic and hidden deep in the archive of your wardrobe.

A lot of it comes down to the way clothes look as they grow old and get worn. The ways they shape to your body and reflect their uses. When you wear clothes that look too pristine and perfect, it can look like you’re in a costume. The patina is what makes clothes look like real and functioning parts of a life well-lived. There’s a joy in getting them patched up and repaired; resoling your boots to take you into another winter; fixing the jeans that have seen you through the last decade. It’s all part of the fun.

I have a pair of boots from Our Legacy, bought the best part of 10 years ago, that are now like the ship of Theseus, worn down and rebuilt over years of wear and trips to the cobbler. One of my favourite things to wear is an old Drake’s button-down shirt that is so scuffed and faded you can barely see the stripes that were once there.

I am not the only one who wants my clothes to look old and battered. “I want all my clothes worn in,” says Chris Black, a brand consultant and co-host of the podcast How Long Gone. “Whether I buy them vintage, or have them and wear them forever, it just feels and fits better.”

As an example, Black tells the story of a Levi’s Orange Tab western shirt that he bought two decades ago and still wears regularly. “It mercifully still fits, has the perfect patina and looks great under a blazer.”

The perfect patina is the thing we’re all searching for, the thing that makes clothes feel like ours. But there are shortcuts that mean you don’t need to wear the same shirt or pair of jeans every day. In the 1990s, Stone Island packaged its new jeans with a sandpaper glove and instructions for creating your own artificial wear and tear. It was a shortcut to creating a patina, a way to make your jeans look well-worn and well-loved before you’d even left the house. Writing about this release, Professor Andrew Groves, who teaches fashion design at the University of Westminster and oversees the Westminster Menswear Archive, recently explained that it meant “the marks of time could now be applied on command”.

Other brands distress their clothes before they’re sold: stone washing denim for the perfect fade or leaving loose threads hanging from knitwear. Danish label mfpen is no different, often mixing tailoring with pre-worn details such as faded black T-shirts or distressed polo shirts. The idea is that each item will continue to age and change in its own unique way, telling the story of its wear.

“With mfpen, I work with traditionally ‘neat’ garments, and I think some wear and tear breaks the stiffness,” says Sigurd Bank, the brand’s founder and creative director. “I like that mix. Same with a wrinkled shirt, love it. Personally, it feels easier to wear stuff when it already feels slightly broken in – you don’t have to be as gentle with it then.”

Bank’s approach to clothing extends beyond his work at mfpen. The designer likes the clothes he wears to show evidence of wear and tear. In particular, he mentions a pair of straight-cut jeans that he wears almost daily – watching the texture change over the seasons – and his love for battered and frayed headwear. “I think a smashed cap is great,” he says. “For me, it’s an item that needs to be broken in before it’s good. I don’t like clothes when they look too new.”

This approach to dressing – wearing, tearing and later repairing – makes clothes look better while also giving them a story. The memories of times you’ve worn a certain shirt or pair of shoes. “It probably sounds like a cliche, but a worn piece has some history to it,” Bank says.

Whatever the item is, it looks better with age. It’s why people spend a fortune on vintage T-shirts and why nothing beats the feel of something you’ve known and loved for years. It’s a direct contrast to the collectors and hoarders putting pieces away in their “archive”, preserving clothes that they have no intention of ever wearing. “If you buy it, wear it,” Black says. “Nothing is less cool than collecting clothes that you never wear.”