The post Style & Fashion Drawings: Resole Report appeared first on Put This On.

Krishna from Columbus writes: I’m currently rebuilding my wardrobe and buying some higher-quality pieces. Since these suits will be a bit expensive for me, I’d like to know how to best care for them. How do I go about finding a reliable dry cleaner? What things should I be doing to make sure my clothes last?

Here’s the short answer: get a garment brush and some appropriate hangers, do some things to prevent clothes moths from invading your home, dry clean infrequently, and figure out the proper care routine given how your clothes are made. 

Here’s the longer answer: To figure out how to take care of your clothes, it helps to think about how they’re made and how dry cleaning is done. When you buy high-end tailored clothing, much of what you’re paying for is the careful shaping that’s put into the garment. Suits and sport coats are made from a combination of canvas, haircloth, padding, and skillful stitching, which turns a two-dimensional piece of fabric into a three-dimensional form. Once the garment is sewn, it’s shaped through heat, pressure, and steam. At a factory, this is done through a machine. In a tailor’s workshop, it’s done by hand using a hot and heavy iron. 

Let’s take a look at what we mean by shaping. In the photos above, taken from Jeffery Diduch’s excellent guide on touching up your suit without wrecking it, you can see how much shaping is in the garment. The chest is nicely round; the sleeves conical. There’s not a dent, wrinkle, or ripple anywhere. This shaping is partly responsible for why tailored jackets are so flattering. When made well, they have a flattering V-shaped figure, which is possible through stitching and ironwork. You can’t get that silhouette out of a dress shirt. 

Over time, this shaping will naturally fall out, and the garment will have to be pressed into shape again (I find the sleeves are often the first to go, especially if you have a cramped closet). At home, it’s pretty easy to press trousers. All you need is an ironing board, a regular iron, a water spray bottle, and a pressing cloth (in a pinch, a pillowcase will do). You can find online tutorials for how to press trousers by watching these videos from the British menswear retailer TM Lewin or bespoke tailors Antonio Liverano, Patrick Chu, Richard Anderson, and Dylan Chong. 

Pressing a jacket, on the other hand, is a different matter. Knowing how to press a jacket well requires time, skill, experience, and professional training. You also need the right equipment, such as a sleeve board. I’ve embedded a video above showing how Liverano & Liverano do it at their workshop in Florence, Italy, but only to show the skill involved. This is not something I recommend trying at home unless you want to become a tailor. 

Once you see the shaping that goes into a high-end tailored garment, it’s easier to appreciate a couple of things. 

First, you want to avoid garment steamers. Companies sell garment steamers on the promise that they’ll remove wrinkles. They will, but they also remove shaping. Remember that a garment’s shape is made using a combination of heat, pressure, and steam. It’s like using a curling iron on your hair. If you run steam through a garment without applying pressure, the fibers relax, and the garment goes limp (much like how a woman’s hairdo will go limp if you run steam through it). In rare cases, a garment steamer can cause a fused garment to delaminate. In more common instances, it will cause the seams and edges to pucker (see photos above). Since a tailored garment is made from various layers of material — the shell, canvas, haircloth, padding, and stitching — forcing steam into the garment can cause the fibers to expand and contract at different rates. Over at StyleForum, you can find threads where people have asked about their ruined suits, only to find it’s because of their steamer. A tailor can sometimes fix a puckered lapel with a good hand press. However, sometimes the damage is permanent. 

If you’re worried about wrinkles, buy garments that don’t wrinkle easily in the first place. High twist wools are naturally wrinkle-resistant, and heavier fabrics will rumple more than they wrinkle. Aim for materials that are at least 10oz (midweight fabrics between 12oz and 14oz are better). Wrinkles should fall out of these garments if you hang them up for a few days. If you have to use a steamer, use it judiciously and stay away from the seams. Steaming the back of a jacket (lightly) can be OK. Pushing a ton of steam through the lapels and chest is a bad idea. 

Second, think about how dry cleaning is done. Most dry cleaners don’t clean their own clothes. Many are just drop-off locations for a mass-cleaning facility outside the city’s limits. For every one of these facilities, known as a central plant, there might be five to twenty “satellite” shops scattered throughout various neighborhoods. These shops compete on price, service, and turnaround time, but the cleaning quality is often poor (largely because the price has been driven so low through competition). It’s not uncommon for mass cleaning facilities to reuse their cleaning agents, which can deposit dirt from previous loads onto your clothes. Many also don’t separate stains and pre-treat them accordingly. And almost none of them will have something on-site to help shape a garment. The high-end pressing machines you find in suit factories are too expensive; skilled people who know how to press a suit jacket properly are in short supply. Instead, many of these cleaning plants will just put a suit jacket on a dummy and blow hot steam throughout it, which is terrible for the reasons mentioned above. Or they’ll put them through a heavy Hoffman press, which can crush a finely tailored jacket’s shoulders, sleeves, and lapels. 

So, how should you care for your garments?

Get a Garment Brush: A garment brush will reduce the number of times you have to take your clothes to a dry cleaner. To use one, hold your jacket by placing your hand under the shoulder pad and brush downwards on the garment. Alternatively, you can set your garment on a table and gently brush it along the nap of the fabric (if it runs in one direction). Kent in England makes some lovely garment brushes that will last you a lifetime. The CC20 is a two-sided brush with different levels of stiffness. The CP6 is designed for softer fabrics such as woven cashmere. I have both and, to be honest, don’t think they differ too much. Get one that appeals to you and adjust your brushing technique accordingly. On a softer garment, be gentler; on a hardy tweed, you can be rougher. Never brush so hard that you’re taking the pile off a fabric. A garment brush will knock some of the superficial dust from your garments between wearings, and it’ll restore the nap on woolens if you press your own trousers. 

Get Good Garment Hangers: Remember that tailoring is all about shape, and you need to find ways to preserve that shape. Quality garment hangers do this by supporting your jacket through the shoulders. An ideal hanger will have wide, flared shoulders that slightly bend forward, mimicking your natural posture (which your garment will have been built for). It should also have a rounded neck, as square necks can stretch out your jacket’s collar. You can find quality hangers through The Hanger Project or, more affordably, The Container Store.

Protect Against Moths: When storing suits away for a season, dry clean them first to ensure they’re free of moth eggs. You’ll also want to keep them in zippered garment bags made from pure cotton, not plastic (The Container Store sells them for $20 apiece). Throw some aromatic things in your closet to deter moths from going in. Cedar blocks and lavender sachets work well, but don’t let them touch your clothes, as they can leave behind oils. Additionally, and unfortunately, proper moth prevention involves regular cleaning. Vacuum the back of your closet and wipe down the shelves at least once a year (ideally before April, when moths eggs start to hatch). Spray the floorboards with Cedarcide, safe for pets but deadly for insects. We have more moth-prevention tips in this interview with Camille Myers Breeze, a museum textile conservator. 

Find a Reliable Dry Cleaner: If you see a small shop with no machines except for a conveyer behind the counter, and they charge $8 to clean a two-piece suit with next-day service, you’re likely working with one of these drop-off locations for a central plant. It’s also likely that your clothes are not getting that much attention. 

Instead, try to find a package plant, which is a dry cleaning business with its own equipment on-site. Ask them how they treat different types of stains (e.g., oil- versus water-based stains). Ask if they use freshly purified or freshly distilled fluids with every run. Check how they press garments — by hand with heavy iron or by machine using hot steam? When you get your garments back, pay attention to the cleanliness of the seams and edges, the shape of the garments, and the feel of the fabric. Do they feel soft, as you remember them, or a bit stiff? Many cleaners will use what’s known in the trade as sizing, which stiffens a fabric a bit so that it’s easier to press. Great for efficiency, but bad if you want to maintain the soft hand and lovely nap on something such as high-quality woolen flannel.

If you can’t find a reliable dry cleaner near you, I recommend sending things to Rave FabriCARE in Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re a full-service package plant and the best dry cleaner I know of in the United States. Along with cleaning everything themselves and pressing garments by hand, they offer a gentler sponge-and-press service for people who don’t want to dry clean.

The tips above are the Gold Standard of care for Gold Standard suits. If you buy bespoke suits from Savile Row, you’ll want to follow this guide closely because you’ve paid a lot of money for that careful tailoring and shaping. However, if you buy more affordably priced, factory-made suits, they may not have that same shaping. In those cases, it may not be worth sending things out to a high-end dry cleaner regularly, as the cost of service can eventually exceed the price of the garment itself. A steamer might pucker your suit, but you can use one judiciously and take comfort in knowing that few people notice these small details. The best care practices will be those that make the most sense for your wardrobe, budget, and service options around you. 

(Photos via Alex Simpson, Jeffery Diduch, and The Armoury)

The post Q & Answer: How Should I Take Care Of My Suit? appeared first on Put This On.

As the weather outside has gotten chilly, many of us will find ourselves reaching for our favorite knitwear. But just as you’re about to put your sweater on, you may notice a small hole. Perhaps your belt buckle rubbed against it while you were washing dishes. Or your cat swiped at you. Maybe worst of all, a moth found its way to a delicious meal despite your best sweater-keeping methods. No matter the reason, finding a hole in your knitwear is disheartening. 

However, it’s not hopeless. Although holes can appear devastating, you can repair them using darning. Darning is a repair technique that fills a gap with new material, rather than requiring you to patch it or sew it closed. When done with yarn that resembles the original material, the repair can be almost undetectable. 

There are two ways to repair a hole in a garment: pay a professional or do it yourself. A professional mender will make holes literally vanish. Some specialize in what’s known as French reweaving or invisible reweaving, where individual strands of thread are woven into the original cloth. You can use these companies for holes you find in woven materials, such as what you’ll find on suits, sport coats, or trousers. As you can imagine, such services are not inexpensive — a hole the size of a pencil eraser can easily cost $50 or more to repair. These companies can also fix knitted sweaters, although the same logic applies. The finer the knit, the more expensive the repair, and in some cases, the repair cost may exceed the sweater’s price. 

This leaves us with the most economical and arguably, the most rewarding option. If you’re working with a hole in a sweater, you can learn how to darn it yourself. Thankfully, darning is not challenging to learn.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Needle
• Scissors
• Thread

Optional:

• Darning mushroom. Alternatively, you can also use any hand-sized, round object, such as an orange or a tennis ball.

First, you want to make sure you’re working with a neat, clean hole. If there are any remaining threads or frays, cut them off to have a tidier starting area.

Next, thread your needle. If you’re trying to make your repair less noticeable, you’ll want to use yarn that matches the size and color of the original fabric. Some new sweaters actually come with an extra bit of yarn, so save those whenever you get them.

To start darning, apply a darning stitch, which is a simple running stitch where you weave the thread in rows along the grain of the fabric and reverse directions at the end of the row. Start by doing this horizontally or lengthwise. 

Left: the flow of the darning stitch; Right: darning stitch over the hole, highlighted in green

Make sure not to pull too tightly as you want your stitch to remain loose. Otherwise, you might create some creasing or puckering in the end. A darning mushroom or other round objects can help apply tension to the hole, making it spread out. Remember, the goal is to fill the gap, not close it.

Once completed, you then weave your yarn through the stitches you just completed. You’ll see that you’re weaving in new material as you progress. Eventually, when enough yarn has been incorporated, the hole will be filled.

Weaving pattern used over darning stitch, illustrated and over the actual hole

For more darning resources, check out this Reddit guide or Youtube video.

I think the last step is to acknowledge that not every repair will be perfect. Even with some practice, I have difficulty darning larger holes, which are less forgiving than smaller ones. However, even when the repair looks poor, I take great pride in it. Clothes are often an extension of our identity, so I find it noble to see someone has taken the time to repair a garment. You can even inject some character into your repairs by using different color threads or trying new stitches. In the end, you learn a new skill, help the environment by not throwing away a sweater, and hopefully gain a deeper connection with your clothes.

The post Darn It: A Guide On How To Fix Holes In Sweaters appeared first on Put This On.

I love saucy foods and nice clothes, but the two don’t always mix. The other day, I was enjoying a bean burrito when a drop of hot sauce landed on my pants. I felt devasted. I had just bought this suit last spring, and it cost me a bit of money. I also know from experience that oil-based stains are harder to get out than water-based ones. Water-based stains, such as what you might get from spilled soda, can sometimes be taken out through a wet wash. Oil-based stains, on the other hand, have to go to a dry cleaner. And I don’t have much faith in my local dry cleaner.

When I got home, I was ready to contact Rave FabriCARE, the best dry cleaner I know of (they’re based in Arizona and will take mail-ins). But then I remembered a trick I learned from Chris Despos, a bespoke tailor based in Chicago. He suggested that oil-based stains can sometimes be lifted out with baby powder.

I figured it couldn’t hurt. So I fetched some baby powder out of the closet and sprinkled it liberally. I left it to sit for about six or seven hours, brushed it off, and still noticed a faint stain. So I reapplied it again and let it sit overnight.

By morning, the stain was gone.

The nice thing about this trick is that it’s a completely dry application, so there’s little chance of you worsening the situation. Sometimes when you apply water and try to scrub out a stain, you’re setting it into the fibers. Other times, if you use some cleaning solution — particularly on cotton — you can remove the dyes and leave a different mark. This is why Stu at Rave FabriCARE suggests that people just gently blot — don’t rub — a stain and send the garment to him.

But with baby powder, there’s no risk of either of these things happening. You’re not rubbing or potentially spreading the stain with water; you’re not risking removing dyes with some liquid cleaning solution. Ideally, you’re just lifting the stain out like a sponge.

Clothing emergencies arise at inopportune times, and you don’t always have time to get things to a dry cleaner. So I recommend having a few things on hand at home for when these situations arise. Some things you might find useful:

• Baby powder: Available at your local pharmacy or grocery store. I imagine any brand will do. I bought the cheapest, most generic one.
• Garment brush: If you wear tailored clothing, you should already own a garment brush. In this baby powder application, you’ll need one to clean the powder off your clothes. But in regular times, you can also use a garment brush to knock the dirt and debris off your tailored clothing, which reduces the number of times you have to send them to the dry cleaner. My garment brushes are from Kent. While they’re not inexpensive, they last forever (likely the rest of your life). If you don’t mind the splurge, the double-sided CC20 has bristles with different levels of stiffness. The softer, gentler side is suitable for delicate fabrics such as cashmere wovens. However, the cheaper CP6 works just fine for most situations.
• Tide To Go Pen: Tide’s To Go pens are a bleach-free, hydrogen peroxide-based cleaning agent that helps break down the pigments in food. For a suit, I would sooner send the item to Rave FabriCARE than risk something liquidy — just on the chance that I make things worse. But for something less consequential, such as a shirt, a Tide To Go pen might be a smart solution.

• OxiClean: The do-all, magical stain remover for anything that can be thrown into the laundry. For tough stains, let the garment soak in an OxiClean solution overnight. 
• Saphir Omni’Nettoyant Suede Shampoo: You may also want something on hand for suede. A few years ago, I accidentally stained a suede trucker jacket with some tahini sauce (I’m a messy eater, apparently). On the upside, I was able to get most of it out with Saphir’s Omni’Nettoyant suede shampoo. It didn’t work 100%, but it removed about 90% of the stain, and sending it to a dry cleaner would have changed the entire jacket’s nap. In my experience, the shampoo is gentle enough not to cause permanent water damage (although my heart did stop for a second when I saw the liquid darken the tan leather — it later dried just fine). 
• Suede Cleaning Brush: After you use Saphir’s suede shampoo, you’ll need a way to restore the nap. I use a suede and nubuck cleaning kit. A few swipes with this brush and the suede should feel new.
• Sneaker Cleaners: There are a ton of sneaker cleaners on the market nowadays, and sneaker forums are full of nerdy debates about which one is best. Personally, I just stick to Jason Markk and have never been unhappy with the results. However, Complex gave the nod to Crep Protect. 

The post A Clothing Emergency Kit appeared first on Put This On.

About seven years ago, I started sending all my shoe repair jobs down to Willie’s Shoe Service after having a frustrating experience with a local cobbler (they promised to fix the heel, but ended up ruining the leather in the process). Willie’s Shoe Service is based in Los Angeles, which is a good eight-hour drive from where I live. That’s too far for me to visit in person. I was a bit skeptical at first of whether Raul Ojeda, the proprietor, could do a good repair job remotely. But after a totally smooth and successful first order, I’ve been sending everything down to him ever since.

Ojeda is in a unique position when it comes to the shoe world. He took over Willie’s Shoe Service some years ago from the shop’s founder, Willebaldo “Willie” Rivera, who opened his business in 1956 across from Paramount Pictures on Melrose Avenue. The original Willie was known for producing made-to-order shoes for the film and TV industry. He made the leather sandals that Charlton Heston wore in the 1956 film The Ten Commandments, as well as all of the boots that the Starship Enterprise crew wore in the 1979 movie Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Ojeda apprenticed under him for three years before purchasing the business in 2007.

Today, Ojeda runs two businesses. There’s the shoe repair shoe, Willie’s Shoe Service, and then a totally bespoke operation he calls Don Ville. Being that he both repairs and makes shoes, he can solve just about any problem. I once bought a pair of Oak Street Bootmakers boots and found the insole strangely slippery, so I had Raul replace them. Our illustrator Ryan once found that the back seam on his Carminas had burst open and had them repaired here. Willie’s Shoe Service can add sole protectors, change sock liners, and fully resole shoes. He even resoles sneakers.

Unfortunately, Willie’s Shoe Service has been hard hit by the pandemic. If you’re in the Los Angeles area, the good news is that they have a new pick-up and drop-off service (meaning, they come to you). If you’re a little further outside the Westside or downtown, they also have a curbside service. And if you’re a bit further out still, like me, then they have a full mail-in service complete with print labels.

We’ve talked a lot about the importance of supporting small businesses at this time. A countless number of small shops around the country have already closed, but they don’t capture headlines like Brooks Brothers or J. Crew filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy simply because they’re more about local news (Curbed recently did a send-off to 500 small businesses that have closed this year in New York City alone). But this story is doubly true for craft-based businesses, including tailors and cobblers. These are people who have trained for decades. Should they be forced to find new jobs, it would be a tremendous loss to this industry, our communities, and these crafts.

If you happen to have a pair of shoes sitting in your closet that’s in dire need of some repair, consider sending them to Willie’s Shoe Service. Raul genuinely does an amazing job and really knows his stuff (just check out this shoe breakdown he did for us five years ago). You can also see examples of his work on Instagram.

Willie’s Shoe Service

248 N. Western Avenue

Los Angeles, CA 90004

Phone: (323) 463-5011

The post The Best Remote Shoe Repair Option appeared first on Put This On.

The post Style & Fashion Drawings: To Mend Again (and Again) appeared first on Put This On.

With so much more time at home, I’ve been using the opportunity to take care of some household chores. Over the weekend, I vacuumed up the back of my closet, wiped my sleeves, and sprayed the floorboard with Cedarcide (a pet-safe preventative measure for killing clothes moths). In the United States, April is the National Hatching Month for clothes months, which means now is about as good of a time as any to take care of some wardrobe cleaning. If you need tips, we once interviewed Camille Myers Breeze, a textile conservator with decades of experience. If anyone knows how to preserve precious textiles, it’s her.

This is also an excellent time to take care of your shoes. From now until April 7th, Carmina is holding a shoeshine marathon on Instagram, where you can show off your work. The top three entries, as voted on by the community, will also win prizes (although the prizes have yet to be announced). Just tag your entry with the hashtag #Carminashoeshinemarathon to participate. ​

For a full in-depth guide on how to shine your shoes, you can revisit our interview with Gou Ishimi and Naoki Terashima, winners of two Japanese shoeshine competitions. The Hanger Project also once published a video on their technique, and I once gave five tips for a better shoeshine. Of course, Jesse also showed his routine in our webisode on shoes.

I admit, my normal shoe care routine is very simple. It revolves around the very basic principle of “how do I get this done as quickly as possible, as I don’t actually like shining shoes.” For an everyday routine without the fuss and bother of re-coloring your sole edges or building a mirror shine, I think these steps are best. It may not win you an award in Carmina’s shoeshine competition (or, it may), but you’ll definitely wind up with better looking shoes. I’m starting today with a pair of dusty split-toes I’ve had in seasonal storage.

The Most Important Step: Leather Conditioner

Routine application of leather conditioner will do more for the health and appearance of your shoes than anything else. It will help bring out the suppleness and richness in the leather, give the color some depth, and most importantly, prevent your uppers from drying out and cracking. You don’t have to apply leather conditioner often — only when the leather starts to look a little dry. But like Brylcreem, a “little dab will do ya.” Put a small pea-sized drop on a rag and spread it over each shoe. My leather conditioner of choice is Allen Edmonds, but it looks like the company may have reformulated their conditioner. Guys who argue about this stuff online often recommend Bickmore’s Bick4.

You’d be surprised what leather conditioner alone can do. In the photo above, I’ve removed my shoelaces, brushed my shoes down with a large horsehair brush, and applied a few coats of leather conditioner. You can already see how the conditioner helps bring out the leather’s color and luster. Just compare the photo above to the image at the top of this post, when the shoes were dusty and dull.

For a Light Shine, Apply Cream Polish

Now it’s time to apply shoe polish. I use the small brush you see above, which is called a dauber, and begin with cream polish as a base. One of the advantages of cream polish is that it has more color pigments than wax, which can help build up that beautiful depth of color that people online often call a patina. The general rule is that you want to choose a cream polish that’s as close in color to your leather as possible, but don’t worry about matching. You won’t want to use black polish on tan shoes, but something ever-so-slightly darker will help you build a bit of depth in the leather’s color.

The other advantage of cream polish is that it further conditions your shoes. Granted, if you’ve already conditioned your shoes with a proper leather conditioner, you can always jump to a wax polish. But I often use the two in connection to get an added depth in color.

Using a dauber, spread a small amount of cream polish on your shoes and then brush them out with a large horsehair brush. Do this until you see a light shine. On very casual shoes, such as penny loafers, you may want to stop here. Sometimes very casual shoes benefit from only have a very light shine, instead of something glossier.

Optional: Wax Polish

If you want to bring out the color some more, you can also use a wax polish, which often comes in a larger, flatter tin. Wax polish is excellent when you want to add a protective layer to your shoes, such as on boots that you might wear in the rain. They’re also good for building a glossier shine. In the photo above, you can see the difference. The top shoe has a wax polish, while the bottom shoe does not.

Here’s a trick when applying wax polish: think of this as layers. Full-grain leathers have very small, almost microscopic pores. When you’re building a shine, you’re essentially filling in those pores and making the surface glossy smooth. To do this, you don’t want to slather your shoes with wax. Instead, start with a tiny amount and use the large horsehair brush to spread it around. You want to buff your shoes until you see a light shine. Then apply another layer of wax polish and repeat. I usually apply three light coats.

You also want to keep wax polish away from areas where the shoe flexes. Unlike cream polish, wax polish hardens. If you apply it to areas where the shoe flexes, it’ll eventually crack. This won’t ruin your shoe, but it won’t make them look that great. And it may be a pain in the rear to remove. Instead, keep wax polish to the toes and heel. A very light wax coating on the vamp is fine, but you want to keep it to a minimum.

Now Admire Your Work

Now put your shoelaces back in, give your shoes a final brush, and admire your work. Online, you’ll often read people say that you need different daubers for different colors of shoe polish, so that you’re not mixing colors such as tan and black. I find that shoe polish comes off the brush pretty quickly with a quick rinse and some soap. You’ll have to wait overnight for the brush to dry, which may not be ideal if you’re polishing a large number of shoes. But for regular routines, a single dauber should suffice. The last step, of course, is taking a flick for the ‘Gram.

Items in this post:

• IKEA kitchen towel
• Saphir Médaille d’Or Pommadier cream polish
• Saphir Médaille d’Or Pâte de Lux wax polish
• Allen Edmonds horsehair brush
• Allen Edmonds dauber
• Allen Edmonds leather conditioner (no longer made)
• The Hanger Project leather shoeshine carpet
• Shoes by Nicholas Templeman

The post How To Take Care Of Your Shoes appeared first on Put This On.

I was supposed to jump on a flight to Mexico later this week to attend a friend’s wedding. I had the flights booked, a hotel room reserved, and a cat sitter was waiting in the wings. But like many people around the world are finding, the coronavirus outbreak has not only disrupted plans but also changed the rhythm of daily life. Cities around the globe have instituted curfews, shut down schools, banned large gatherings, and asked people to stay at home. Every regular activity nowadays feels like it comes with a new moral complication: how do you not only keep yourself safe but also slow the spread of this virus and thus not endanger those in your community?

The Atlantic has two useful articles related to the coronavirus. The first is by Kaitlyn Tiffany, who covers the dos and don’ts on social distancing. (Reading that article last week helped me come to a decision to cancel my trip to Mexico). Amanda Mull also has an article on how to get food safely these days. “The coronavirus makes an age-old dilemma much more fraught: Order in, or cook at home?” reads the lede. The short of it: avoid large crowds by going to the grocery store at odd hours or patronizing less popular stores. As for ordering delivery, the risk involved depends on how the workers are treated and how the food is brought to your door.

Over the weekend, New Yorker contributor Rachel Syme tweeted a question I hadn’t even considered yet: can you still go to the laundromat? For many people, particularly those living in big cities, bi-weekly trips to the laundromat are a fact of life. Not all homes have a washer-and-dryer hook-up, and not every apartment building has a communal laundry room. And so, washing your clothes is a necessary task that can’t always be done while avoiding other people.

Let’s be honest: going to the laundromat was never a fun activity in the first place. They’re often dirty, sometimes crowded, and often have an unpleasant, stuffy smell. You have to sit there for hours on end waiting for your clothes to be washed and then dried. Plus, there’s the task of schlepping your clothes in and out of your home. So, for those who are looking to either get through the next few weeks, possibly months, without having to go to the laundromat — or, ideally, cut the process out of your life entirely — here are some laundry solutions for small spaces.

How to Find a Quality Dry Cleaner

The first and most obvious solution is to find a reliable dry cleaner. The good news is that most clothes can be dropped off at your local dry cleaner, including those that require a wet washing. The bad news is that most dry cleaners aren’t very reliable.

There two types of dry cleaning businesses. The first is known as a dry store, where the store acts as a drop-off point for some remotely located, centralized plant. For every central plant, there may be anywhere from five to twenty of these “satellite” shops located throughout various neighborhoods. The second is what’s known as a package plant, where a business has their own equipment on-site, which means they do the dry cleaning themselves.

So how can you tell if a dry cleaner is any good? Well, roughly speaking, a dry store is more likely to have lower-quality service. Their aim typically is to control costs, increase efficiency, and turn things around as quickly as possible. If you see a tiny shop with no machines besides a conveyer behind the counter, and they’re charging you $8 to clean a suit with next day service, the chances are, you’re clothes aren’t getting much consideration.

Package plants, on the other hand, tend to have better service, but you can’t assume this just because they own their equipment. For basic, everyday clothes, such as an inexpensive dress shirt, it may not matter. But for higher-end tailoring and/ or precious items, you may want to ask whether the company sorts clothes by stain and material. It helps to know a few things about dry cleaning.

Dry cleaning is good for taking out oil-based stains (such as those from lotions, salad dressings, and pizza drippings), but it can potentially set in water-based stains (such as those from juice, coffee, or even sweat). A good dry cleaner will thus identify the types of stains you have and pre-treat them accordingly so that damage isn’t set in through the cleaning process itself. See if your cleaner has a technician that does this. Some dry cleaners also re-use their cleaning fluids, which means dirt from previous loads can be redeposited. Ask your cleaner if they use freshly purified or freshly distilled fluids with every run.

Further reading: A primer on dry cleaning, how to find good dry cleaners, how to remove oil stains, how to clean every fall/winter fabric, experts weigh in on when to wash it, and the best online resource for cleaning questions

The Basics of Hand Washing

Washing clothes by hand is pretty straightforward. First, clean out a sink basin and fill it with cool water. Add some gentle detergent, swish it around until you see suds, and then submerge your garment. For delicate items, such as knits, you want to swish it around for a bit and leave it to soak for fifteen minutes before returning to swish some more. For hardier items, such as woven dress shirts, you can scrub the collar and cuffs with a laundry brush.

Afterward, rinse your item and remove as much excess water as possible before leaving it to air dry. For sweaters, take care to not let the stream of water even hit your knitwear (otherwise, the fabric can felt). When gathering up your item, you also want to press it into a ball, rather than wringing out the water. Yarns are extra delicate when wet.

Hand washing is tedious and not something we’d recommend for long term laundry care outside of specialty items (I always handwash knits and delicate items, but launder things such as shirts). However, if you’re just trying to get by the next couple of months, it may be a practical solution.

On the upside, there are things you can do to make the process easier. Companies such as Soak sell suds-free detergents, allowing you to skip the rinsing process and cut your laundry time by about half. The downside is that they’re pricey and not always readily available locally (we’re not thrilled by the idea of ordering something like detergent by mail, but this seems to be the only solution for now).

For tough stains, you can also soak your garment overnight in Oxiclean, our preferred pre-launder stain remover and available at most mainstream grocery stores. Oxiclean uses sodium percarbonate, which is a combination of sodium carbonate and hydrogen peroxide. When it’s dissolved in water, sodium carbonate releases oxygen, which bubbles up and helps lift stains, while hydrogen peroxide provides color-safe bleaching. Oxiclean is also heavy with surfactants, which disrupts the surface of stain molecules, opening the door for cleaning agents to get in. Whether you’re washing by hand or machine, adding a scoop of Oxiclean will always help get your clothes a little cleaner. But the product is best for soaking garments overnight before laundry day. I typically use it for really tough stains. On the downside, it leaves a slimy film behind. This isn’t a problem if you’re washing your clothes by machine, but if you’re doing it by hand, it may require a bit more rinsing.

Further reading: How to wash a sweater by hand, experts weigh in on when to wash it, and the best knitwear detergent

Small Laundry Machines for Small Spaces

The best laundry solution for tight spaces is to get a compact, portable laundry machine. Today, some machines take up as little as 1.5 square feet in terms of floor space. If you can stand somewhere, you can fill that space with a washing machine.

These systems rely on a basic input and output system. You need some way of getting water into the machine, which typically means connecting a hose from a sink to your washer. If you live somewhere with a free sink, this can be a permanent set up. If you don’t, you can connect the hose as needed. Next, you need somewhere for the water to drain. Generally, this will be to a sink with a large basin or even a bathtub. This two-part system involving an input (sink) and output (drain) basically serves as a make-shift washer hook-up.

Compact laundry machines have come a long way in the last twenty or thirty years. Today, they’re reasonably quiet, efficient, and have multiple settings for different wash and spin cycles. You can find them at local appliance shops or on Amazon. Some of the more popular manufacturers include Giantex, hOmeLabs, and Panda (a friend of mine uses this Giantex model and swears by it). Setting one up, however, will require a bit of jerry-rigging. For any given model, you can search YouTube for reviews. It’s generally helpful to have a local hardware store that can help you find the right hose to connect your new laundry machine (alternatively, if all else fails, many of them will work if you simply pour in buckets of water). Mesh nylon or wire filters are also useful to make sure lint doesn’t clog your drains.

We always recommend air drying clothes. An electric, heat-conducting dryer is the enemy of all clothing. Cotton fibers are supposed to have some humidity in them, but when they’re run through a dryer, they become brittle, break, and eventually take on a dull, worn-out appearance. Plus, dryers shrink clothes and crack mother-of-pearl buttons. They’re quite terrible.

You can hang your clothes outside on a clothesline or by using an in-door set up that consists of a foldable drying rack. Horizontal drying racks take more space, but they allow you to dry more at a time (they’re also better for bedsheets). Vertically oriented drying racks take less floor space and are better for narrow spaces. You can supplement these with sweater drying racks, which are designed to allow airflow from below, helping cut your drying time. This drying rack has a sweater shelf built-in (however, the trade-off is that you don’t get to use the space for underwear, such as on this rack). With a compact washing machine, some mesh bags for delicates, mesh filters for lint, and an air drying rack, you may never have to run to the laundromat again.

Further reading: Experts weigh in on when to wash it, a better way to dry clothes, guide to laundry symbols, and how to dry clothes properly,

FOR PEOPLE WHO DON’T HAVE AT-HOME LAUNDRY FACILITIES:

Here are guidelines from the Coin Laundry Association about washing your clothes at a laundromat. pic.twitter.com/ur9yEN9Hkp

— mossby pomegranate, badass therapist (@angrykittenpaws) March 15, 2020

The post Tiny Laundry Solutions For Tiny Living Spaces appeared first on Put This On.

Every day, I wake up with the renewed hope that I’ll look as fabulous as the picture-perfect influencers I follow on Instagram. And yet, every day, I walk out of my home wearing the same clothes they influenced me to purchase, but covered lint, cat hair, and all manner of debris. For ordinary folk who don’t live in vacuum-sealed Dwell Magazine enclosures, dust is part of life. Pet hair clings to textured fabrics such as tweed, hopsack, and moleskin like two sides of Velcro. Unless you wear Saran Wrap — and, perhaps, not even then — you probably spend a small part of your day brushing yourself off like Steve Hickman, the hambone artist.

So, to help you, as well as myself, I tested $160 worth of lint brushes. These range from high-end clothes brushes to German-made rubber brushes to standard lint rollers. For those who live with cats or dogs, or have ever refrained from buying a corduroy suit because they were skeptical of the upkeep, here’s to a lint- and pet-hair-free life.

Kent Clothes Brush ($66  – 110)

Back in the day, before a dry cleaner was on every block, people cleaned their tailored clothes with a clothes brush. If you have suits, sport coats, or tailored trousers, you’re still better off cleaning your garments with a clothes brush than sending them to a dry cleaner. Most dry cleaners are little more than drop-off locations for the same mass-cleaning plants that are located just outside of a city’s boundaries. Those cleaning plants can be harsh and careless, which is why we often recommend sending high-end tailored clothing to Rave FabriCARE, instead. But for periodic cleaning, a few quick flicks of the wrist with clothes brush should get out a lot of the dirt and debris.

When you read about clothes brushes, you’ll often find people recommending Kent Brushes, a heritage British company that has been producing high-end brushes for nearly 250 years. I have two of their brushes: the CP6 and CC20, which are both natural cherrywood brushes made with 100% boar bristles. The main difference is that the CC20 is double-sided and designed with a slightly softer side for delicate fabrics such as woolen flannel. However, I find I rarely calculate which side is better for which fabrics. I also imagine that any difference will be effectively washed out by how hard you brush. If you’re cleaning a more delicate material, you’ll be fine with the single-sided brush if you simply brush gently.

I’ve owned my clothes brushes for about ten years now, and while I find they’re great for the usual task of knocking out dirt and debris, they’re less great for removing lint and pet hair. To be sure, they work, but you have to brush your garments for about the same amount of time as you would when doing a regular cleaning, which isn’t always the sort of “pick this up and go” effort that you’d want out of a lint remover.

That said, if you wear tailored clothing, you need a clothes brush. Kent is the most often recommended, although you can also find affordable alternatives from Valentino Garemi, Abbeyhorn, and Bürstenhaus Redecker. The Armoury has two Japanese-made garment brushes, one of which is small enough to pack for travel. The Hanger Project also has garment brushes across a range of price points, while Mr. Porter sells one from the Italian luxury company Lorenzi Milano. Over at Permanent Style, Richard Anderson and Brian Lishak show how you can brush down a garment.

Redecker Natural Lint Brush ($27)

Based in Germany, Bürstenhaus Redecker has been manufacturing high-end brushes since 1935, often combining natural materials such as oiled beechwood, goat hair, horsehair, plant fiber, and rubber. I mostly like them for their designs. Their website reads: “Today, the name Redecker has long stood for a skillful combination of naturalness, function, and design. It stands for an extraordinary mix of innovative mentality, solid craftsmanship, and creativity. We always place a high value on our products, not only in being practical but also beautiful and, most of all, ecological.” Very Goopy.

Unfortunately, this brush sucks. The rubber bristles are supposed to pick up lint, dandruff, and especially animal hair using friction and, I guess, some kind of magic. But I found it’s too gentle to be effective, and it’s difficult to grip (perhaps their bulkier model or Grove’s rounded lint brush would be more comfortable to hold). On the upside, it’s gentle enough for very delicate fabrics, such as cashmere-blend jackets and doeskin, but you still have to give it a few passings before things come off. At $27, this one of the more expensive options. It also feels more like an accessory you put in a perfectly curated, artisanal broom closet, rather than something you use for daily life.

OXO Good Grips Furlifter ($15)

In the last few years, the market has been flooded with lint rollers and pet hair removers designed with the same velvety fabric. ChomChom uses the material in a back-and-forth roller that you have to use so violently, it clacks. Zelta has the material on what looks like a hairbrush. So far, the best I’ve seen is from OXO, which comes stationed in a base that doubles as a cleaner. The interior of the base is lined with the same fabric, which cleans the brush when you insert and remove it. (There are plenty of other makers for this same design if you search Amazon).

The fabric has tiny bristles that point in one direction, not unlike the quills of a calm porcupine (although, much gentler). When you brush the fabric with the grain, it feels smooth and velvety. When you brush it against the grain, you can feel the little spines, which are designed to pick up lint, dander, and pet hair. OXO’s design is helpful in that there are small arrows that point in the direction you must use.

I found this brush works best on densely woven, hard finished fabrics, such as moleskin, corduroy, and most worsted suitings. When you use it on a napped fabric, such as woolen flannel, it takes off too much of the cloth’s surface. It’s not even usable on a prickly Shetland or Harris tweed because the bristles get caught on the fibers. On the upside, I find I only ever really need to use lint rollers on materials such as moleskin and corduroy anyway. On napped flannel and tweeds, you don’t really notice lint. When this works, it works exceptionally well, as it takes fewer passes to effectively clean a surface.

Evri Pet Hair Removal & Lint Brush ($5)

There are dozens of companies nowadays making specialized pet fur removers, which you can find at your local pet store or online suppliers such as Chewy. This one from Evri is pretty simple. It’s a rubber injection molded brush with dozens of one-inch bristles. It’s cheap, effective, and comfortable to hold.

Unlike OXO, it works across a wide range of fabrics since you’re essentially just brushing something down with a bunch of tiny rubber bristles. It also, for some reason, seems more effective at removing lint and pet hair than a standard clothes brush. However, it’s also a bit harsher. When brushing down a moleskin jacket, I noticed the brush was picking up a lot of the cloth’s nap. Given what it does to a cloth’s pile, I don’t know if I would use this on high-end tailoring. But for affordable, daily items such as hard-wearing chinos, this would be good if you don’t want to spend more than $5.

Scotch-Brite Lint Roller ($5)

Finally, we have your standard lint roller. I originally went in search of a better option because my clothes brush wasn’t as useful for picking off lint, and a lint roller seems environmentally wasteful. Some options, such as Sticky Buddy, are basically rubberized lint rollers that promise not to create any paper waste. But with reports that you have to spend a lot of time and water to rinse them off, I wasn’t sure if they’re that much more environmentally friendly.

In the end, I’ve found that lint rollers are your best all-purpose lint remover (sadly). But depending on your needs, they can be expensive and wasteful. If you, like me, want something that doesn’t result in piles of paper waste, I think OXO is your best option. Those velvety solutions are good for the most challenging fabrics — as mentioned, fabrics such as moleskin and corduroy — and they’re easy to clean. If you’re working with napped fabrics where the fibers run in different directions, such as spongey tweeds and woolen flannel, then you may be better off with a clothes brush and/ or a lint roller.

For me, I’m using a clothes brush for regular cleaning, OXO’s lint remover for tough, hard finished fabrics, and then the occasional lint roller on delicate materials. A realistic expectation for how clothes should look in daily life will take care of the rest.

The post I Dropped $160 On Lint Brushes And Tested Each One So You Don’t Have To appeared first on Put This On.

I have a cat. Along with usual things that come with having a pet, such as accepting you’ll always have a non-trivial amount of pet hair on you, living with a cat means putting up with snags. My cat has snagged every imaginable piece of clothing: sweaters, ties, scarves, pajamas, silk dressing gowns (yes, I own a silk dressing gown), and even sport coats. On StyleForum, there’s a running joke about hopsack, which is a kind of chunky, plain weave. I can tell you: hopsack is great for navy sport coats, but it will attract the claws of a playful cat.

Since declawing is evil and I don’t always have time to trim my cat’s nails, I live with snagged clothing. The bad news is that it’s hard to fix a snag. To do it, you have to use a blunt needle and tease the material back into place. Pull the thread through to the next stitch, and then the next, and then the next –- dispersing the excess material evenly across the row. You want to work both sides of the snag so that everything looks natural. This easier on large-gauge knits, but it’s possible with fine ones as well.

The good news is that, while it’s challenging to fix a snag, it’s pretty easy to hide one. All you need is the Snag Nab It. This handy little tool should be part of any basic home repair kit, which includes sewing needles and multiple spools of thread (in different colors), a pair of thread snippers, and a seam ripper (all pictured above). If you search around, you can find upgraded thread snippers from Japan. They look beautiful but don’t perform any better than the more common varieties you can find at your local sewing supply store.

Back to the Snag Nab It. Made by the sewing supply company Dritz, the Snag Nab It looks like a 2.5” sewing needle with a rough end. Use this to pull the loose thread to the other side. Remember: You never want to cut a snag, as then you’ll have two loose threads that can unravel. Instead, you want to pull the snag through to the backside of the fabric, where it’ll remain hidden.

You can see how I’ve done this with a recently snagged RRL flannel. To do this, you push the needle through the snag. The rough end of the needle will catch the loose thread and pull it through to the other side.

Here’s how it looks on the backside of the fabric.

The one downside of the Snag Nab It is that, since one end is rough, it can create new snag as you pull things through. I’ve used the Snag Nab It on knits and wovens, but if your material is particularly delicate, you may want to try another method.

For very fine materials, such as single-ply cashmere or delicate silks, use a large sewing needle with a big eye. You can pull the snag through the eye using a tool known as a needle threader. Once the snag is through the eye, you can pull it to the backside of the fabric by pushing the needle through. Dritz also has a latch repair tool that essentially does the same thing.

Alternatively, you can thread the needle with any old thread — like a thread from a random spool — then push the needle through to the other side. The friction caused by pushing new material through should drag the snag with it. It may take a few passes, but I’ve fixed delicate silk ties this way. Remember, for something very delicate, go slowly. It’s better to work the area a few times, rather than worsen the damage.

For more difficult jobs, send your clothes to a professional. I’ve had good experiences sending sport coats to Best Weaving & Mending, and sending knitwear to The French American Reweaving Company. In Chicago, Without a Trace is known to do good work. All three of these companies take mail-ins.

The post The Very Useful Snag Nab-It appeared first on Put This On.