Fabric Care For Vintage Clothing
Fabric Care For Vintage Clothing
Some people collect old bottle caps. Some people keep on buying toys far past the age when the staging of a Luke Skywalker vs. Batman fistfight is considered socially acceptable. Some people have an attic full of Roy Rogers comic books swaddled in impermeable Mylar wrap and kept standing ramrod straight by acid free backing boards. Some people, for whatever reason, even collect old feed bags, tin house-shaped cookie jars, ancient bottles of stain remover or fabric care chemicals, or political campaign buttons that celebrate yesteryear’s controversies (“Go Madly For Adlai!”).
But a collection that is more functional than many is the collection that the owner can wear: a closet full of vintage clothing.
Vintage clothing collecting took off during the recession of the early 1990s, its growth fueled both by the need for newly graduated college students and other young people to look fabulous while saving money, and by the 1970s nostalgia that seemed a perfect psychological escape mechanism for a period in which, for the first time in several generations, a large number of young people expected to finish life worse off financially and socially than their parents. They looked back to a time when post war economic expansion made life seem safer (and when the downside of all that plastic and fossil fuel had not so dramatically revealed itself). The clothes that had once represented all that seemed disposable and trivial about the seventies and sixties, the large bell bottoms and the polyester disco shirts, now seemed comforting, because it reminded people of a time when disposability did not seem both threatening (to the ecology) and out of reach (to the pocketbook).
The interest in seventies vintage clothing gradually spread to the clothing of earlier periods, as people began to appreciate the fine craftsmanship of fitted shirts worn by salesman dads (as the pop song “Fitted Shirt” by Spoon celebrates) or the durability of a Bogart-era trenchcoat.
But what is not visible to the naked eye, which only sees people dressed up fabulously in the clothes of previous decades, is the considerable fabric care that goes into any decent collection of vintage clothing. Thoughtful storage, scrupulous dry cleaning, the use of delicate but still effective stain removers: all of these await the person who wants to make tomorrow’s good impression using yesterday’s well preserved clothes.
The first step in fabric care for vintage clothing is to avoid those wire hangers that are a staple of most closets. With clothing that is already tending toward frayed condition, because of its age, wire can poke right through the seams. Fabric care requires the use of padded or wooden hangers. Old sweaters or other items made from delicate or wide woven fabrics should be folded or rolled rather than hung.
We tend to want to put unused clothing in the attic or basement. Every year, all those sweaters get folded into a plastic storage bin and get placed in an out of the way corner of the attic, next to the holiday decorations. But this treatment simply will not work for vintage clothing. As with any aging fabric product, vintage clothing needs to be kept out of extremes of heat and cold, or of super low or high humidity. Direct sunlight is also not helpful. Especially avoid any areas prone to flooding. Once those water stains set in, stain removal is nearly impossible.
The ideal place would be a cedar chest or a closet where the room temperature stays around seventy degrees, give or take, and where there are no household products or chemicals sitting nearby, waiting to be spilled. (Stain removal is always a touch and go operation with older fabrics, and it is best to avoid having to do it at all.) You also want pests and pets to stay away--there’s no stain like a pet stain, and no stain removal job like a pet stain removal job. Lavender is a surprisingly effective way of accomplishing this end, without leaving the choking and inexpungable aftertaste that moth balls leave. Fabric care does not have to smell like your grandmother’s old tablecloths!
Hand cleaning is the only option with clothes more than fifty years old. After all, they were made for hand cleaning, since the washing machine only really took off during the Kennedy administration. Hand cleaning is good for fabric care, too. When you are done wearing an item of vintage clothing, clean it with water and laundry soap, then hang it to dry. This will prevent sweat and other stains from setting in (the best kind of stain removal is stain prevention, after all).
Dry cleaning is also a possibility. But don’t use just any dry cleaner--find someone who has experience with vintage clothing. Good sources of information on this topic might be owners of nearby vintage clothing stores, fellow vintage habitués, or curators of museums that have textile collections. Trust your fabric care to the same person the professionals use.
As for stain removal, for those times when, despite your best efforts, stains do set in, an all natural stain removal product is best. Vintage fabric care requires that you avoid harsh chemicals such as many “stain removal in a bottle type products” now use.
About StainHotline.com
StainHotline.com, operated by The Casite Company, offers safe, environmentally friendly stain removal and upholstery protection products.For stain removal products to help with leather stains, carpet stains, wine stains, ink stains, and for odor removal, please visit http://www.stainhotline.com.
Some people collect old bottle caps. Some people keep on buying toys far past the age when the staging of a Luke Skywalker vs. Batman fistfight is considered socially acceptable. Some people have an attic full of Roy Rogers comic books swaddled in impermeable Mylar wrap and kept standing ramrod straight by acid free backing boards. Some people, for whatever reason, even collect old feed bags, tin house-shaped cookie jars, ancient bottles of stain remover or fabric care chemicals, or political campaign buttons that celebrate yesteryear’s controversies (“Go Madly For Adlai!”).
But a collection that is more functional than many is the collection that the owner can wear: a closet full of vintage clothing.
Vintage clothing collecting took off during the recession of the early 1990s, its growth fueled both by the need for newly graduated college students and other young people to look fabulous while saving money, and by the 1970s nostalgia that seemed a perfect psychological escape mechanism for a period in which, for the first time in several generations, a large number of young people expected to finish life worse off financially and socially than their parents. They looked back to a time when post war economic expansion made life seem safer (and when the downside of all that plastic and fossil fuel had not so dramatically revealed itself). The clothes that had once represented all that seemed disposable and trivial about the seventies and sixties, the large bell bottoms and the polyester disco shirts, now seemed comforting, because it reminded people of a time when disposability did not seem both threatening (to the ecology) and out of reach (to the pocketbook).
The interest in seventies vintage clothing gradually spread to the clothing of earlier periods, as people began to appreciate the fine craftsmanship of fitted shirts worn by salesman dads (as the pop song “Fitted Shirt” by Spoon celebrates) or the durability of a Bogart-era trenchcoat.
But what is not visible to the naked eye, which only sees people dressed up fabulously in the clothes of previous decades, is the considerable fabric care that goes into any decent collection of vintage clothing. Thoughtful storage, scrupulous dry cleaning, the use of delicate but still effective stain removers: all of these await the person who wants to make tomorrow’s good impression using yesterday’s well preserved clothes.
The first step in fabric care for vintage clothing is to avoid those wire hangers that are a staple of most closets. With clothing that is already tending toward frayed condition, because of its age, wire can poke right through the seams. Fabric care requires the use of padded or wooden hangers. Old sweaters or other items made from delicate or wide woven fabrics should be folded or rolled rather than hung.
We tend to want to put unused clothing in the attic or basement. Every year, all those sweaters get folded into a plastic storage bin and get placed in an out of the way corner of the attic, next to the holiday decorations. But this treatment simply will not work for vintage clothing. As with any aging fabric product, vintage clothing needs to be kept out of extremes of heat and cold, or of super low or high humidity. Direct sunlight is also not helpful. Especially avoid any areas prone to flooding. Once those water stains set in, stain removal is nearly impossible.
The ideal place would be a cedar chest or a closet where the room temperature stays around seventy degrees, give or take, and where there are no household products or chemicals sitting nearby, waiting to be spilled. (Stain removal is always a touch and go operation with older fabrics, and it is best to avoid having to do it at all.) You also want pests and pets to stay away--there’s no stain like a pet stain, and no stain removal job like a pet stain removal job. Lavender is a surprisingly effective way of accomplishing this end, without leaving the choking and inexpungable aftertaste that moth balls leave. Fabric care does not have to smell like your grandmother’s old tablecloths!
Hand cleaning is the only option with clothes more than fifty years old. After all, they were made for hand cleaning, since the washing machine only really took off during the Kennedy administration. Hand cleaning is good for fabric care, too. When you are done wearing an item of vintage clothing, clean it with water and laundry soap, then hang it to dry. This will prevent sweat and other stains from setting in (the best kind of stain removal is stain prevention, after all).
Dry cleaning is also a possibility. But don’t use just any dry cleaner--find someone who has experience with vintage clothing. Good sources of information on this topic might be owners of nearby vintage clothing stores, fellow vintage habitués, or curators of museums that have textile collections. Trust your fabric care to the same person the professionals use.
As for stain removal, for those times when, despite your best efforts, stains do set in, an all natural stain removal product is best. Vintage fabric care requires that you avoid harsh chemicals such as many “stain removal in a bottle type products” now use.
About StainHotline.com
StainHotline.com, operated by The Casite Company, offers safe, environmentally friendly stain removal and upholstery protection products.For stain removal products to help with leather stains, carpet stains, wine stains, ink stains, and for odor removal, please visit http://www.stainhotline.com.
