Top Five Tips for Vintage Clothing Cleaning and Care

We’ve all been there, you are wearing your favourite Vintage dress and the unimaginable happens – you spill food or drink on it and hold back the tears as you wonder if it will ever be the same again! Or you find the most exquisite vintage top in your local vintage shop but aren’t sure if you will be able to get that little mark off it. Should you buy it or should you not?
And once you have bought your perfect vintage piece, how can you be sure to keep it in tip top condition?

We My Vintage are here to save the day. With over 18 years experience in handling, restoring and cleaning Vintage Clothing; we have picked up more than a few tips along the way. Here we give you our Top Five Tips for Cleaning and Caring For Vintage Clothing (you can thank us later!)

1. Just Wash It!

OK, it sounds super obvious but seriously, you don’t always need to be afraid of washing vintage clothing in the machine or by hand. Very often, vintage clothing labels will either be missing or not contain washing instructions as these did not become a requirement until the 1960s. There are also many items of vintage clothing that will stipulate that they must be dry cleaned.
It is important to remember that we now have the technology and the sophisticated detergents to wash clothes at a much much lower temperature than they would have decades ago. There are many washing powders and liquids that work on a cold wash and there are delicate settings on most washing machines so it is always worth trying this first to see if it does the trick.
Obviously logic has to come into play here and some heavy wools and thin silks will not benefit from a machine wash, but most items will certainly withstand a careful hand wash.

2. Rusty? No problem!

Sometimes dresses with metal zips from pre 1950s will get rust marks if the zips have gotten wet or damp. A simple solution for this is mixing lemon juice with table salt. This creates Oxalic Acid which is an instant rust remover.

3. Hang with Care

The coat hangers to choose are incredibly important for the longevity of your clothing, whether it be vintage or not. I hope it goes without saying that you should never use wire coat hangers, the things are evil! If you have any then we can only advise that you get rid of them as they cause damage to almost all items of clothing. The best hangers you can use are either wooden ones, padded ones or the more modern velour covered ones. These are so much kinder to your clothing regardless of fabric and will minimise the risk of tearing or mis-shaping in your wardrobe.

4. Darn that Sticky Zip!

Do you have a zip that cause you a headache? One that just never seems to behave itself, a stubborn and down right annoying sticky zip? When you are sitting in front of the TV one night, take your garment and a pencil and spend about 20 mins rubbing the pencil lead on the zip. Obviously you need to be careful not to touch the actual fabric, but the lead with really lubricate the zipping process and it’s be gliding before you know it!

5. Stains are a Pain

If you identify a stain on your item of vintage clothing, it could have been there for a long time. Because of this, it is always best to start the process of stain removing by soaking the item. Ony use COLD water and soak for a minimum of 30 minutes, or overnight. Once soaked, you can try to agitate the stain and loosen the fibres before moving in with a stain treatment like Shout or Oxy. We personally recommend Shout as it is powerful whilst remaining gentle. Again this needs to be left on the stain for a while in order the the enzymes to work into those fibres and it is possible that you will have to repeat this process a few times. However, with a bit of patience this will eradicate most types of stains without leaving a water mark behind.

So those are just a few of our best tips, we have many more which we will be sharing on the blog in the future. If you have any great tips then please let us know in the comments below as we always love to discover new ideas.

Thanks for reading, we will see you next time!
MV
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