IT’S A before and after situation. Once you have opened a wardrobe door to discover a favourite cashmere sweater or faithful bit of tweed resembling macramé, your relationship with moths changes forever. A flutter of dusty beige will send you running for the mothballs and putting your dry cleaner on code red. And if losing a trusty friend in the form of a favourite pair of plus fours sounds bad, worse is to come. Numbers of clothes-eating moths are on the rise and they’re homing in on soft furnishings, carpets and even historic tapestries and artefacts.
We might sigh about our silk scarves but organisations such as English Heritage and the National Trust have fabric bearing the weight of history to worry about. A quick trip to English Heritage’s website reveals terrifying images of a munched Victorian gun box, desiccated carpets dating to the mid 19th century and a rather unfortunate series of taxidermy birds. “Clothes moths are potentially the greatest threat to our
