Maintaining Vintage Clothing - as part of the Women's Style series by GeoBeats. Vintage clothing is clothing that is older and it needs to be taken care of differently than a regular clothing. Never take your vintage clothing to a dry cleaner. If you do take your vintage clothing to a dry cleaner make sure that you only take only one article at a time and a small article because you do not know exactly what the dry cleaner is going to do with it. The chemicals and the components that are in the dry cleaning solutions are very harsh on vintage clothing. Some of the fabrics from the '30's, the '40's, like rayon, silk, organza, are very delicate and the chemicals in the dry cleaning process can damage your clothing. So, it is probably a better idea to look for a cleaner who is going to use something that is chemical free so that your clothing does not get ruined from a dry cleaner. Another tip to maintain your vintage clothing: I would like to talk about sweaters. Maintaining sweaters can be tricky because you can get moths and moths can eat them up. A good thing about sweaters to maintain them is to put them away in cedar or moth. You never want to keep your sweaters out. You want to put those things away and double wrap them in plastic. The same goes with coats. Coats are another vintage article that need to be maintained carefully and correctly. A good coat that is left out can get moth holes, it can get sun damage. It needs to be stored in a cool, dry place. And it you have got clothing coat hangers, covered hangers, then you can go ahead and cover your coats up and that will keep them well. Another good article to take care of when you are talking about vintage is fur. Fur is an article that needs to be taken care of and not dried out. Fur needs to stay in a cool, dry place or the leather will crack. It is a natural fiber from an animal like leather, raffia or wool. It needs to be taken care of and maintained with a lubricant ,such as like with leather, any kind of lubricant so that the fur will not crack because you can find cracks and rips and tears in good vintage pieces that would otherwise have been beautiful to wear. You can wash vintage clothing in the washing machine. I have done it for over ten years. We have been in business for over fifteen years and what I call vintage washing, I call it a vintage wash. What I do is, I will take like colors in any kind of your vintage clothing, whether it is lined or not, I will keep them all in a bag, and then I will do a cold water wash on delicate cycle on a front loading washing machine. You can use delicate on a top loading washing machine. That will work as well, but front loaders are very gentle on your clothes. When your clothes are done in that cycle, you want to take those clothes out and shake them out. You never want to put vintage clothing in the dryer. It does not matter what it is, no dryers. You want to shake that out, hang it up and put it on a hanger and steam it out as it dries out. Many of the vintage fabrics are delicate. They are old and fabrics can disintegrate over a period of time, so you want to take care of them correctly and properly. And, thus, your clothing will last longer and it will look perfect.