How to wash lace so it survives the year

Lace does not wear out. It gets destroyed, usually in one wash, usually by a machine, and almost always at a point you could have closed with your fingers beforehand.

Everything below follows from that. There is no maintenance regime here and no special product to buy. There are five habits and about five minutes.

What a care label is required to say

There is a federal rule about care labelling on clothing, and it is more specific than most people assume.

Hand or machine. Not delicate, not gentle, not care as appropriate: the label has to commit to one of two things. If it says hand wash, that is a statement the maker has to stand behind.

A reasonable basis, before sale. Which means the instruction on the tag is not a legal shrug, it is a claim the maker is answerable for, and it outranks anything written on a page like this one.

Why a machine destroys eyelash lace

Eyelash lace is the kind with loose fibres standing off the edge, and it is the trim on a large part of this range. Those fibres are the whole point of it and they are also its weakness.

In a drum the garment is not being washed so much as beaten against itself and against everything else in the load. The loose fibres tangle with each other, felt into a mat, and never come apart again. No wash bag prevents this, because the garment is tangling with itself rather than with the drum.

Mesh fails differently and just as fast. It has no fibre strength across the hole, so any snag becomes a run, and a run in mesh spreads exactly the way a ladder in a stocking does.

The five habits

1. Hook everything shut first. An open hook is a small metal hook travelling through a basin of lace. This single step prevents most holes in a set, and it takes four seconds.
2. Cool water, hands, two minutes. Not hot: heat is what relaxes elastane permanently, and the elastic in a band is what holds the whole garment up. Two minutes of squeezing is enough for something worn against clean skin.
3. Never wring. Twisting distorts the knit and mesh does not spring back. Press the water out between two towels instead.
4. Dry flat, out of daylight. A hanger stretches wet lace at the straps and leaves it stretched. Sunlight takes colour out of black faster than any number of washes.
5. Store the set together. Half a set is not a set, and the piece that goes missing is always the thong.

Detergent, and what to skip

A tiny amount of ordinary liquid detergent is fine. Three things are not.

• Fabric softener. It coats fibres, and coated elastane loses recovery. On a garment held up by elastic that is the opposite of care.
• Bleach of any kind. Including the oxygen sort. Lace is often a blend, and the blend yellows unevenly rather than whitening.
• Anything enzymatic or biological. Enzymes work on protein and silk is a protein. On a silk trim they do exactly what they are designed to do.

The label may also carry a warning, and warnings in this rule have a required form.

So a tag saying Do not bleach is not a suggestion or a disclaimer. It is the regulated wording for a thing that will damage the garment.

Washing a set together, and when not to

A two-piece set can go in the same basin. A four-piece often should not, and the reason is the garter belt.

Garter belts carry metal clips and adjusters, and those are the hardest objects in the whole wash. Put one in with mesh and it will find the mesh. Wash the hardware separately or last, in the same water, once the delicate pieces are out and pressed.

Stockings are the opposite problem. They are the finest thing in the parcel and they snag on a fingernail, let alone on a hook. They also take about thirty seconds to wash, which makes doing them on their own the least inconvenient rule on this page.

What the symbols mean when there are no words

Some labels carry symbols instead of sentences, and the rule permits it as long as the words are there too.

Four of them matter on lingerie. A basin with a hand in it means hand wash only. A basin with a number gives a maximum water temperature. A crossed triangle means do not bleach. A crossed square with a circle inside means do not tumble dry, and on this kind of garment the last two are almost always crossed.

If a label carries a symbol you cannot read, the wording is required to be there as well, and the wording is the part that governs.

How often is often enough

Less often than most people assume, and this is the part that quietly extends the life of a set more than any washing technique.

A garment worn for an evening against clean skin is not soiled. Airing it overnight and putting it away is a complete answer, and the piece that gets washed after every wear is the piece that ages fastest.

The exception is anything worn to sleep in, which is most of the nightwear department. That is genuinely worn against skin for eight hours and does want washing on the same rhythm as a t-shirt.

Storage, and the drawer problem

Lingerie is stored badly almost universally, and the fault is always the same: it is crushed under something.

• Do not stack padded pieces. A moulded cup folded in half stays folded, and no wash brings the shape back.
• Keep hooks away from lace. The same hook that catches in a basin catches in a drawer, and it has all week to do it.
• Give boning room. A bustier folded across the bones bends them, and a bent bone presses on a rib forever afterwards.
• Keep colours apart when new. Deep reds and blacks in this range are dyed to a strong depth and the first few washes give some of it up.

Colour, and the first three washes

Deep reds and blacks make up most of this range, and both are dyed to a depth that gives some of itself back at the start.

That is normal and it is finite. The first two or three washes release surplus dye, after which the colour is stable. What is not finite is what happens if you wash a wine red with a white chemise in the same basin: the white takes the surplus and keeps it.

So the rule is only about the beginning. New reds and blacks wash alone for the first few times, and after that a mixed basin is fine.

What cannot be fixed

Three failures worth recognising early, because effort spent on them is wasted.

Felted eyelash lace

Once the loose fibres have matted there is no combing them apart. The garment still works, it just no longer has the trim you bought it for.

A run in mesh

It spreads with wear and there is no stitch that stops it. A clear nail varnish at each end buys a few wears and nothing more.

Relaxed elastic

A band that has been through heat does not come back. It is the commonest end for a bralette and the reason cool water is first on the list rather than last.

Travel, and the one thing that ruins a set in a suitcase

Lingerie travels badly for a reason that has nothing to do with creasing. It gets packed loose, and loose means the hooks find everything.

The whole fix is a single freezer bag or a fabric pouch per set, hooks fastened before it goes in. It weighs nothing, it takes the same space, and it is the difference between unpacking a set and unpacking a knot.

The second travel note is about satin specifically. Satin creases where it folds and the crease sets in a warm suitcase, so a satin slip should be rolled rather than folded. Mesh and lace do not care.

Where our own range sits

Every card here names the fabric the maker publishes, and that is the fastest way to know which of the failures above applies to a given piece before you buy it.

If the piece count rather than the care is your question, the piece on what actually comes in a lingerie set covers what arrives in the parcel.