I have been buying and selling vintage clothes for a long time. Taking everything to the dry cleaners began to get too expensive, so by trial and error I learned that I could launder most clothing myself. Dry cleaning is also somewhat toxic, so this is a much greener way to wash the item yourself. Alright! Lets talk about how to launder that cashmere sweater. First, the dryer is not your friend! Great for towels and such but no good for vintage items , cashmere and wool. Secondly, lets talk about the washing machine. Sometimes, when hand washing your sweaters they will grow larger. The water will absorb in the fabric and stretch the fabric , so go ahead and put your wool or cashmere sweaters in the washer. Make sure all the sweaters are in the same color family. This is especially important because colors bleed. With White sweaters you must only have other white sweaters and in some cases, you may just want to wash one sweater at a time. A very mild soap; Woolite is good, but you can also use others. I normally use a very little amount of soap. Thirdly, Fill the tub with cold water. Note this down, cold water and only cold water. If your washer has a very gentle cycle you may use that as well. However, you may want to experiment! It all really just depends on how much you paid for the sweater… most of my sweaters are vintage and did not cost hundreds of dollars. If you are very apprehensive of this process, fill the tub with water, agitate the sweater yourself by hand let it soak and then turn the dial to spin. Let the water spin out of the sweater. Lastly, Hang the sweater on a towel rack to dry. If it is cashmere, it will probably be dried by morning. Cashmere dries very quickly. You have probably seen sweaters with piling. So where does piling come from? Most of the time from washing with other fabrics the agitation causes your wool or cashmere to pile. Yet, when laundering the sweater yourself this can easily be remedied because the piling comes right off, and if you are washing correctly you will create no pile on the sweater. Your sweaters will be soft, smell good and the more you wash them the better they get. So what if a hole appears after laundering? If this happens, which is rare, this might be from moths and you may not notice until the laundering. To solve this problem, just get out your needle and thread make sure sweater is inside out and carefully, hand- sew the little spot. Collecting cashmere sweaters is great! I can have 4o in one drawer, they stack marvelously! Plus, they don’t itch like wool, they are warm but not hot. Not to mention, The colors are fantastic! Thanks for reading my blog and have a great day!
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