Linen

Soft linen fabrics are perfect for creating gorgeous, flowy garments. Linen is also durable, gets softer and absorbent with each wash, and is naturally moth resistant. Although linen can withstand high temperatures, it’s better to wash it at low temperatures for environmental reasons. Wash with a gentle cycle to extend the life of your linen garments. You can use the dryer to dry linen and hemp clothing but air dying is always better for preserving fibres, colours, and shape, and saves energy! 

Hemp

Similar to linen, hemp garments are durable and breathable, an even more sustainable option than organic cotton. You can machine wash hemp clothing in the normal cycle. The only downside of linen and hemp textile is that they are prone to wrinkles. The drying process is the same as linen clothing. To remove wrinkles, iron on the highest heat setting or use a steamer. 

Viscose 

Viscose is considered a synthetic fibre derived from wood-pulp. It is highly absorbent and lustrous and has no static buildup. However, viscose fabrics have poor resilience, weaken when wet, and are prone to mildew. Cleaning viscose can be tricky. Viscose rayon can shrink badly and dyes tend to fade. The safest way to wash it is by hand in cold water and air dry it. Make sure to smooth out the fabric when drying because it can be hard to get the wrinkles out of viscose fabrics. 

Tencel

Tencel (or Lyocell) is derived from wood pulps to create rayon material. It often feels soft on the skin, breathable, and flattering due to its drape effect. Tencel fabric is also easy to maintain, wrinkle-resistant and dries quickly. To keep your Tencel clothing in its best condition, we recommend turning it inside out then hand washing or gentle cycle washing at 30 degrees with other delicate items. Your Tencel garment may shrink with its first washing but don’t worry, it’s completely normal. Tencel fabrics might lose up to 3% of their mass with the first wash. Don’t tumble dry your Tencel clothing and opt for hang dry. To get rid of wrinkles from Tencel fabrics, steaming is the most gentle and say option. 

Bamboo

Bamboo textiles are gaining popularity these days due to their environmental benefits and appearing more in the stores. Growing bamboo requires 500 times less water and produces 25% fewer emissions. The fabric is absorbent, has no static buildup, and is antimicrobial and mildew-resistant. It’s best to wash bamboo and rayon fabrics with cold water in a gentle wash. We recommend washing bamboo separately from towels and bathrobes as it can cause lint build-up. 

Alpaca

The key to keeping your sweater in the best shape is not washing it. Thankfully, both wool and alpaca sweaters don’t need washing so often as they are naturally dirt-resistant and stain-proof. It does a great job at repelling most stains before they are given too much time to get absorbed. Other great benefits of alpaca wool are that it is odour-resistant and antibacterial. For all these great properties of alpaca wool, you barely need to wash alpaca garments.

The important thing about washing alpaca garments is that they NEED to be HAND WASHED. Not even the “hand wash” option of your washing machine will do. They need to be washed by your own hand in cold or lukewarm water. After washing, DON’T WRING, drying should be done by laying the garment flat on an even surface, between two towels. Avoid direct sunlight and heat sources such as radiators, because they can yellow, shrink or damage the fibre. 

Wool 

Similar to alpaca, wool has most of the benefits that alpaca has. Therefore, you barely need to wash the wool garments, making both alpaca and wool garments very sustainable options. Wool garments are also very unlikely to show any creases or wrinkles. Ironing is therefore not necessary. 

However, some wool garments are treated to be machine washable. Although it makes it more convenient for the owner, treatment is often done with chemicals and it removes lanolin from its fibres. The lanolin is what keeps sheep’s skin from infections and makes the wool fibre antibacterial. Hence, untreated wool requires less washing, making it more sustainable than treated wool.

Washing wool sweaters also should be done by hand because wool can shrink easily and the washing machine causes shedding and pilling as well. If you must wash it in a washing machine, wash in Dedicate cycle with low spin, and water temperature no higher than 30 degrees. For drying, the same rules as alpaca apply. You can also wash and dry camel hair items the same way. 

Cashmere

Cashmere is one of the softest and finest fibres you can find. Cashmere sweaters are usually expensive due to the laborious process to comb the hair of goats, and it takes 4 goats to make one sweater. Because it’s such a luxurious material, you might be afraid of ruining your sweater and always send it to the dry cleaners. But it’s actually not that hard to wash your cashmere sweater at home. You can hand wash it with cold water and baby shampoo or detergents for wool and cashmere. If you really cannot be bothered to hand wash but don’t want to spend money on dry cleaning, you can wash cashmere clothing on Delicate cycle as long as you put them in a mesh bag. You can dry your cashmere sweater the same way you dry wool or alpaca. But for storing, it’s better to fold and store in your wardrobe than to use a hanger so that it won’t lose its shape. 

Although we prefer natural materials and we do not use not-so-sustainable materials listed below, we think it’s best to help you make all the clothes you already have last for the environment, so here are some tips to wash your garments that includes materials below.

Silk

Silk garments are dedicate, and have a natural sheen, good absorbency, and drapes well. Keep in mind that silk tends to degrade and weaken with heat and perspiration. Silk fabrics need to be washed very gently and carefully. Some silk garments indicate that they are dry clean only, if not, you can wash your silk garment by hand in cold or lukewarm water. To remove odour from silk fabric, soak it in lukewarm water mixed with a ¼ cup of scented vinegar prior to washing.  Make sure you are using silk-friendly detergent and only keep it in the water for a few minutes. 

If you’d like to learn how to make scented vinegar, check out this article here.

Fur

Fur garments are made with the pelt of animals with fine, soft, and insulating fibres. Common furs used in the fashion industry include mink, sable, fox, beaver, rabbit, raccoon and marten. Cleaning fur items requires careful care. Check out the article by The Sprucce describing how to wash and care for fur pieces here. 

Synthetic

Fabrics such as polyester, polyamide, nylon, and spandex, are synthetics, meaning they are plastic-base. At l’amour est bleu, we are not a fan of synthetic fabrics as they are derived from oil, they shed microplastic every time you wash them, and when natural and synthetic fibres are blended, it makes it very difficult to recycle. There are a number of companies working to find innovative ways to recycle blended fabrics in mass, however, it’s only possible in small quantities at the moment. 

Most synthetic fabrics are machine washable either in cold or warm water (although cold is recommended for white fabrics). You can tumble dry synthetic fabrics, but we recommend line drying because it saves energy. 

Polyester: It’s often blended with cotton. You might want to check the labels but you can usually machine wash clothing made with polyester. 

Polyamide: It’s often blended with viscose or rayon. We don’t recommend machine washing some of the items that contain polyamide since the fabric could expand. 

Spandex: Spandex is usually used for activewear due to its lightweight and elasticity. Active or swimwear with spandex and other clothing with spandex blend can be washed in the washing machine. Turn the item inside out and put them in a mesh bag to avoid tearing and snugging. After washing, always air dry active and swimwear! The heat from tumble drying will reduce the fabric’s elasticity and moisture-wicking properties. 

Acrylic: Unless the acrylic is used in sweaters with wool-like materials or dedicate items, you can wash it in a washing machine. Make sure you select the Dedicate cycle and with both water temperature and spin are low. Do not put acrylic items in a dryer or use iron as acrylic is vulnerable to heat.

Nylon: A strong, durable fabric, nylon clothing is usually easy to wash and care for. Because it resists absorbing moisture and dries quickly, nylon is often used in swimwear and activewear. You can wash nylon clothing in a washing machine with regular detergent. Remember, nylon cannot be dry cleaned or washed with chlorine bleach. When drying, avoid direct sunlight. 

Washing Different Fabrics Together

You certainly can wash different fabrics together. However, make sure all fabrics can be washed at the same temperature, keep the blacks, whites, and coloured fabrics separated, and keep rough fabrics and dedicate fabrics separated.

Storing Your Clothes

As mentioned earlier, knitted garments should be stored folded to prevent stretching and woven items can be hung. We recommend storing all your clothes in breathable cotton bags to protect them from bugs, including some garments that will be stored for a long time such as fur coats. To store fur pieces, make sure the room is cold and humidity is between 45 to 55%, and keep light exposure low. Avoid storing clothes in plastic bags as it encourages yellowing and can trap mildew-causing moisture, which is a prime environment for bugs.

Dry-Cleaning 

The issues with dry-cleaning are worth its individual blog post since there’s so much to discuss. As a part of this Love Your Clothes series, we will publish an article focusing solely on dry-cleaning soon so please stay tuned! 

Drying

The dryer is one of the most energy-intensive appliances in your home. Drying on clothes rack is definitely the best way to reduce your carbon footprint as well as extend the life of your clothes. 

Choosing air drying over tumble drying has the potential to reduce an average household’s carbon footprint by 2,400 pounds a year. Astonishingly, with an average household using their table dryer 20 times a month, the carbon dioxide emitted from just one tumble dryer a year is more than a tree can absorb over the course of the first 50 years of its life. 

Tumble drying can change the texture of your clothing, causing it to shrink, fade, and even lose strength. Researchers washed and dried cotton towels for 20 cycles, and they lost 50% of their strength. After only 20 cycles, the fabric became twice as easy to tear. 

Disposal 

It has become common practice to shop for clothes on daily basis. In Germany, production of clothing has continued to slowly decline since 2010, but consumption has been slowly but steadily increasing over the past decade: total expenditure on clothing and footwear rose by an annual average of 0.5% between 2010 and 2019.

Consumers do not only discard a garment when it fails to satisfy our expectation or utility of the product has been exhausted but only because it’s no longer in trend or people have seen them wearing it. 

Increasing recycling and collection could drive annual emissions abetment of around 18 mission tonnes which would reduce incineration and landfill, moving the fashion industry towards a closed-loop-recycling (CLR) operating model. Disposal of products by selling gives supplementary earnings to the consumers. CLR is crucial in order to achieve circularity. 

Currently, less than 1% of used products are recycled back into the industry’s value chain. To achieve accelerated abatement, the development of sorting and textile blend identification technologies, higher incentives for brands to enable CLR, and consumers to support this adoption.

In the ideal world, all governments and companies provide information about reuse and recycling and motivate consumers to adopt green post-purchase behaviour. Governments should also provide an organised disposal system that allows consumers to dispose of textiles without damaging the environment. Unfortunately, it is not the reality yet, but sustainability issues are attracting increasing attention on executive levels and policymakers with regional and national authorities trying post-Covid recovery efforts to sustainability objectives. 

A fashion supply chain traceability pilot study has led to the introduction of the world’s first intelligent sorting system for textiles in Germany. A charitable collection organisation in Augsburg, Aktion Hoffnung, is leveraging Circular Fashion’s identification technology to streamline how they collect and sort through goods. 

There are numbers of small changes you can make to how you take care of your clothes to reduce your environmental impact. 

What can we do better?

Washing Less

Simply reducing the washing and drying could deliver 186 million tonnes of carbon emission reductions, if consumers made changes in their behaviours such as skipping one in six washing loads, washing half of the loads at below 30 degrees, and substituting every sixth dryer usage with open-air drying. This also requires brands and retailers to offer better care instructions and sustainable and durable material choices.

Washing better

When washing clothes that contain synthetic fibres, you can use Guppyfriend bag to stop the microplastic fibres from entering the waterways. You can also use environmentally-friendly detergents, finding them is getting easier nowadays. Even if you cannot find one at your nearby supermarket or drug store, there are several brands offering sustainable detergents online such as Klæny,

Make It Last

Being environmentally conscious extends to our disposal activity. A number of factors can impact the length of a garment’s life and its environmental footprint. These factors include how owners look after their clothes, willingness to wear the same clothes for a long time, design features such as durability of its fabric or classic cuts that are versatile and never go out of style, and consumers’ ability to mend their clothes.

It would be wise to purchase not so trend-led garments to never go out of style. Minimalistic design is always the easiest way to ensure that it goes well with other pieces you own especially when layering, but it doesn’t mean you should only wear plain, boring outfits! You can still play around with prints, and volume, there are no limits in fashion!

To help you make your clothes last, we are also planning to publish an article focusing on how to mend your clothes, so please stay tuned for that, too!

Shop from Brands with Circular Business Models

Circular business models allow to extend product life, enable recycling and reduce the need for new and finite resources in products. Repair and refurbishment offered by brands and retailers could enable the industry to cut around 143 million tonnes of GHG emissions in 2030. Repairing can extend product life by 1.35x while secondhand re-commerce can extend product life by 1.7x. Both the industry and consumers must realise this adamant potential.

The best thing to do, after all, is to buy less. The Jump, a charity organisation from the UK that encourages consumers to try six shifts to protect the earth and live with joy, suggests buying only three new pieces of clothing a year. If that’s too much of a change to make, you just start by making the clothes you already own last longer. Let it be by simply continuing wearing them or selling them second-hand. What’s important the most is that they won’t end up incinerated or in landfills. And love your clothes ideally a lifetime long.