STARLA WEST INTERNATIONAL BLOG

Today’s blog post is compliments of our good friends at the Fabric Care Center in Indianapolis, IN.

Most people in our professional environment won’t see our home, vacation destination or stock portfolio.  However, they will certainly see the quality of our garments and the care with which we put ourselves together.

Looking after our clothing is an important part of our image.  Even the most expensive items will look cheap and substandard if we don’t take care of them.  Always check the care label and follow the instructions for hand or machine washing or dry cleaning.

Once we’ve invested wisely in our wardrobe pieces, we certainly don’t want to settle for mediocrity when it comes to selecting a dry cleaner to care for them.  Therefore, it is crucial that we find a dry cleaner who values our clothing as much as we do.

We reached out to our friend, James Belt, at the Fabric Care Center for guidance on how to properly take care of a suit in which we’ve invested our hard-earned money.  Here is what James shared with us.

“A properly tailored suit is an item that can flatter almost any personal physique.  Preserving that suit can extend the life of your garment for a considerable time.

Here are a few key points that can help you preserve your suit:

Always keep your suit together. 
Try not to wear or clean your suit as separates.  The suit pieces will no longer match if worn and exposed to light and/or cleaning separately.  Every time a garment is a laundered or dry cleaned, a small amount of dye will come out of the clothing and reset into the other clothing.  If matching items are laundered or dry cleaned at the same time, the rate at which they fade will be the same.

Protect your suit from fading.
Suits can fade when exposed to light for long periods of time, especially, black, brown, dark blue and dark gray.  Always store your suits in a dark closet.  If there is a window in your closet, make sure the outside light doesn’t shine directly onto your clothing.

Remove your suit coat.
Sitting on your suit coat can distort the wool and stretch the jacket so that the lining no longer fits and works with the “shell.”  Always do you best to avoid sitting on your coat.

Remember that not all soil is visible.
Under normal conditions we recommend cleaning a suit after wearing it four times.  Oil from your body, soda, alcohol, and other kinds of dirt can grind into the fabric and wear it out.  The purpose of dry cleaning is to remove odors from the garments, as well as the sugars and bacteria that naturally appear in the oils produced by our bodies.  If these sugars and bacteria are not removed, they will break down the fibers and create holes.

Use shaped wooden hangers to preserve your suit.
The best way to store your suit is to remove it from the hangers we provide and store it on shaped wooden hangers.  At the Fabric Care Center, we encourage you to send your wooden hangers with your suits.  When we deliver your suits back to you they will already be placed on your wooden hangers for you.

Always remove the plastic bag.
The plastic bag that covers our dry cleaned items protects them while in transport.  This bag should be removed before placing these items back into your closet, just in case there is moisture within the clothes that could potentially result in mold.”

Thank you, James, for sharing your knowledge and expertise with us!

If you have any comments or questions for the experts at the Fabric Care Center, please post them here!  We’d love to hear what you have to say.