Lace garments may be dry cleaned. Heirlooming and preservation of antique lace is also recommended for museums as well as individuals.
Derivation: French for “trimmed with leaves of gold or silver,” from the Latin lamina.
Most lamé garments should be dry cleaned.
There are many influencing factors that affect the quality of leather. Every hide has textural variations related to the animal’s genetic makeup, environment, and food supply. The resulting markings and wrinkles on a given hide should be considered part of the hide’s natural beauty and uniqueness. There are numerous types of leathers and leather treatment processes for tanning and finishing leather. The leather used in the garment industry is a byproduct of farming and food production. In the production of leather, each tannery has its own techniques and recipes for creating texture and color variations.
After the hides are tanned, dyed, and finished as desired, skilled craftsmen carefully select hides that match in color and texture. Each hide is cut by hand from patterns that represent the sleeves, collar, body, and other portions of the garment. These pieces are then sewn into a garment.
Professional leather cleaning is recommended when needed for leather garments. Unlike fabric, leather has natural oils that protect and preserve the appearance and life of a garment. Removing these oils reduces the hide’s suppleness. The chemicals used to clean leather frequently remove the natural oils as well as the undesired dirt. These oils must be restored by a professional leather cleaner.
The better the quality of a hide of skin, the less it has to be treated. In a premium quality hide or skin, the full natural grain is retained and exposed. One should see the “fat wrinkles,” the natural markings, and the feel or hand should be supple and natural to the touch. Transforming hides and skins into leather is done in three basic phases: pretanning, tanning, and finishing. Whatever is done to a piece of leather after it is tanned is part of the finishing process. This may include dyeing, rolling, pressing, spraying, plasticizing, lacquering, antiquing, waxing, buffing, snuffing, embossing, glazing, waterproofing, stain-proofing, flame-proofing, or any other post-tanning treatment. Full-grain leathers are color-treated only by transparent aniline vegetable dyes, which shade or color the skins without concealing or obscuring natural markings or grain character. Most furniture leathers have been treated with a coating of pigmentation to help even out the color.
Genuine, natural, unpigmented, and unplasticized leather will breathe and ventilate, thus wicking away body heat. If the surface of the leather has been plasticized, as is the case for most automobile upholstery, the leather cannot breathe and may become stiff and boardy.
Specialized care is recommended to retain the supple beauty and luster of leather.
To produce linen, textile flax is not cut, but pulled from the ground to preserve the long, full length of the fibers. Today, the lengthy process that yields our beautiful modern linen yarn is still described in quaintly archaic terns. Retting and turning is a soaking process wherein natural enzymes break down the pectins that bind the fiber bundles and release the individual fibers. Scutching in a mechanical turbine is the overall process that extracts the fibers. Rippling removes and retrieves the seeds. Drafting and breaking involves passing layers of parallel flax stalks through increasingly finer and faster toothed rollers to separate the textile fibers form the short fibers of “tow” and the woody waste matter or “shives.” Hackling describes the “combing” of “hands” of line flax. Drafting and doubling, or carding, draw out the long or short fibers respectively for spinning into yarn that is ready for weaving, bleaching, dyeing, and finishing into cloth or twisting, polishing, and finishing as thread.
Today, most manufacturers of linen items especially interior furnishings, recommend dry cleaning. Why dry clean a natural-fiber fabric? The underlying reason is not the linen, its self, but the dyes, finishes, interfacing, lining, buttons, trim and thread used in construction. The latter is especially a concern with garments.
For proper care of all linens, professional dry cleaning is recommended.
First patented in 1954 by DuPont (U.S.), spandex fibers were improved significantly during the mid and late ’50s until they began to displace elastic (rubber) in corsets, girdles, bras, and such around 1960.
Spandex is three to six times more powerful than elastic on a weight-to-weight basis, and unlike elastic, spandex is highly resistant to abrasion, ozone, oils (including skin oils and applied lotions), and detergents. And also unlike elastic, the fibers of which must be relatively thick to be strong enough to be used in modern high-speed knitting machines and must be covered with another material such as cotton or nylon (an expensive process) to be suitable for use in clothing, spandex fibers are thin, strong, and light, and can be knitted directly into fabrics in their raw state.
Most lycra garments should be dry cleaned.
Chicago
3325 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.
Chicago, IL 60659
866.267.4560
Chicago Business Hours
Monday – Friday
7:30 a.m. – 6:30 p.m.
Saturday
8:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
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Evanston
1920 Harrison Street
(between Prairie & Green Bay)
Evanston, IL 60201
866.267.4560
Evanston Business Hours
Monday – Wednesday
8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Thursday
11:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Friday and Saturday
8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Sunday
Closed