Linen Care

[Guest]

Should linen suits , and for that matter, cotton, be dry cleaned?

[Guest]

I have dry-cleaned my cream and tan linen suits when they get particularly grimy. But ordinarily I merely have them pressed every three or four wearings. A good linen suit, in a fairly heavy weight, is tougher than you would think: I sometimes press the suits myself with a steam iron. They can take a fair bit of ironing.

[Guest]

If the question is "dry cleaned vs. machine washed", then definitely dry cleaned is my answer. While the linen itself won't suffer much from being washed, everything else (canvasses, shoulder pads, seams, lining, buttonholes) will likely be ruined.

C

[Guest]

If the question is "dry cleaned vs. machine washed", then definitely dry cleaned is my answer. While the linen itself won't suffer much from being washed, everything else (canvasses, shoulder pads, seams, lining, buttonholes) will likely be ruined.

C

I concur.

The so-called washable suit in either poplin or seersucker, such as Haspel, is a cheap suit intended only for one or two seasons of wear. Haspel and others used to advertise that the suits were washable so that very thrifty housewifes would think that they were saving money in dry cleaning. In fact, they saved a few pennies, but they life of the suit was shortened.

Also, a washed suit will be a mess and will require a professional pressing.

It is best, all in all, to have the suit dry-cleaned.

[Guest]

Actally, linen will suffer from often washing, due to the structure of the linen fibre. With every machine washing the material will be softer, as the fibres will loosen. You can notice this by looking at the material. When new, the surface should be plain, but after a few rounds of machine washing little fibres will come off.
It might as well loose the shape, depending on the quality, requiring extensive pressing, which can only be done with professional equipment(and a lot of time), and sometimes even that would not give a satisfying result.
Yet another aspect comes into play, when the suit has a lining and is declared as washable: To achieve this the lining will be of synthetic fibre, which will make you sweat, therefore making the suit useless for warm climates.