I spent thousands of dollars killing moths which destroyed my expensive Vogue wardrobe, ALEXANDRA SHULMAN reveals. It left me traumatized when I found the only thing that really works.

It begins like this, a small flickering movement in front of the eye. You’re not quite sure if you’ve imagined it or not, but it leaves you with a growing fear that it might be…oh, please no! — a miserable moth.

Small but devastating, the damage these nocturnal beasts inflict on clothing, curtains and carpets is horrendous.

Which is why I have a quiet sympathy for the couple who, this week, decided to sue the person who sold them their £32.5 million house in Notting Hill, west London. Since the day they moved in, Iya Patarkatsishvili and her husband Yevhen Hunyak have been plagued by an infestation that they say destroyed their clothes, ruined their wine and even caused moths to land on their toothbrushes.

I have never experienced moths falling into my wine glass or crushing 100 moths a day, as they say happened, but I have experienced the misery and profound financial impact of a serious invasion. Even after a radical elimination of the uninvited guests and their deadly little eggs, the terrible truth is that they always return.

My first experience of the appalling toll of moths was in 2003, when I had been editor-in-chief of Vogue for a decade. In addition to a fabulous wardrobe of evening dresses, coats and bags, she had put together an enviable collection of cashmere scarves and jumpers.

Even though this reward was worth tens of thousands of pounds, I took a cavalier approach and never subscribed to any moth-proof bags, lavender sachets or cedar balls. Moths weren’t something that took up bandwidth in my brain. . . until I saw holes in some of my knitwear. Still, I opined that life is too short to worry about moth holes.

During my childhood I remember visiting houses in the countryside where, when opening the bedroom dresser or the heavy doors of a dark wooden closet, there was always a strong smell of camphor that repels moths.

But we didn’t have them in our London flat and when I was 20 I never had a problem with them in rented accommodation. Maybe my clothes weren’t expensive enough to attract them, or maybe (and there is some credence to this theory) there simply weren’t as many moths in Britain back then as there are now.

But after discovering those first holes in the sweaters, I noticed more and more, especially in the cashmeres, fine cottons, and more expensive silks in my Vogue wardrobe (moths are very attuned to luxury).

I came to the conclusion that it was time to do something about it and called the big boys. The Rentokil man arrived to inspect the house and came to the grim diagnosis that there were moth larvae everywhere. This is not the case, he said, with lavender bags. I would need to fumigate the whole place.

At first, the inconvenience and cost dissuaded me from accepting his suggestion. Surely Rentokil was interested, I thought, in painting the worst possible scenario.

Instead, I would do it my way, and on my next trip to Paris to see the haute couture shows, I bought cans of a very toxic spray to deal with the pests.

French spray was not allowed in this country and I admit I was a little nervous as I ran my luggage through the Eurostar scanners; “Vogue editor imports poisonous substance” was not a headline I wanted to see.

Once at home, I put away all the food and sprayed all the clothes closets and linen storage; I then fled the house with my eight-year-old son during the day while the poison took effect.

Unfortunately, the British bandits were not intimidated by the French infantry. After about a week I saw a couple more walking around my room. It was time to admit defeat and go all out.

Dealing with a moth infestation is not for the faint-hearted. All possible objects that moths may like should be detoxified, including cushions, rugs, children’s stuffed animals, fur, feathers and even animal bristles on brushes. In my case, while I took my clothes to the dry cleaners (and yes, the cost was over a thousand pounds), most of the infected clothes were placed in a sealed tent in our converted attic upstairs and disposed of in a work batch.

As the fumigators went to work in their protective suits, the scene looked eerily like a television thriller: my house was now a contagion zone.

I don’t remember how long the toxic bubble was left to do its work, but the whole house also had to be industrially cleaned: ledges and crevices had to be vacuumed; unwanted visitors on the floor were sucked up; clothes were washed at high temperatures; and furniture was moved away from walls so expert cleaners could reach baseboards that could harbor larvae.

The thing about a dramatic plague is that you suffer from a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder. Getting rid of them is such a difficult, expensive and completely unpleasant task that any possibility of having to do it again becomes one of life’s fears.

This year the mild weather is believed to have caused an increase in pests. Tineola bisselliella, the common clothes moth, only lives for about a month, but is capable of laying up to 50 eggs during that time. The insects are most active between May and October, although if we look at the number of them currently caught in sticky pheromone traps in my current house, they clearly don’t follow a rigid schedule.

One of the reasons they like cabinets and drawers is that they thrive in the dark, so leaving them open should be a slight deterrent. But the truth is that moths are tenacious, and the increasingly large and lucrative industry that has grown to combat them is relatively ineffective.

I must confess that after our traumatic experience – and our tireless efforts to eliminate them – we moved house.

I understand that the Notting Hill couple’s court case centers on whether the previous owners should have admitted to a moth problem when the sale was taking place and the solicitor’s report asked whether there had been any vermin infestation previously.

I’m pretty sure when I sold my house I didn’t check that box either. I would have assumed I had done everything I could to get rid of them, but I wouldn’t have considered them vermin either.

Now, however, I’m wondering what I should do when I think about selling this house. The moths are as under control as possible, but the mouse droppings I’ve discovered? Now that’s another story. . .

Did you find a hole? Here’s how to fight back…

Stuart Hine, former head of the Insect Identification Service at the Natural History Museum, tells Rachel Halliwell how to deal with moths.

• Freeze intruders: Washing clothes at high temperatures will kill moths, eggs and larvae, but freezing is an alternative. Place items in a sealed bag in the freezer; After three days they will all be dead. The dry cleaning works too.

• Bag, close and always store clean: Storing woolen garments in vacuum-sealed bags will prevent them from being attacked again.

• Sweet Smell Deterrents: Hanging cedarwood balls and lavender sachets in the closet does not kill moths, but is effective in keeping them away.

• Get out the vacuum – A thorough cleaning is key to breaking the breeding and feeding cycle. Empty the bag or wash the cylinder afterwards, vacuum the closet floor, and shake out any clothes not in the bag each month.

• Get males out of circulation: Pheromone traps attract male moths to a sticky board, hopefully before mating with females.

• Use chemical sprays – Fly sprays also kill moths, but if all else fails, call pest control who have chemicals to combat infestations.

• Use chemical sprays – Fly sprays also kill moths, but if all else fails, call pest control who have chemicals to combat infestations.