Day 36 | A professional view on dry cleaning

Yesterday's blog post surely caused some conversation, comments and emails. In the end though, I had comments from two professionals in the field.

It basically all comes down to this. Dry cleaning your jeans are ok, and as far as I understand, won't shorten their shelf life. However, you need to find a dry cleaner that knows what they're doing. It's the same with everything in life. You don't go to the first car mechanic you find. You look around a bit, and ask people who have used dry cleaners in your area before.

Here's some tips from Tim McCann, President and Founder of Best Cleaners in Capital Region, New York; "Dry-Cleaning in Hydrocarbon, CO2 and Solvair will return the jeans looking like new or better with no shrinkage." So there's something to ask your local dry cleaner. If you're living in the US, have a look at www.americasbestcleaners.com, for the top 50 dry cleaners.

According to Dependable Drycleaners in Denver, they did a test for a local TV station, where they dry cleaned a pair of pants 10 times, and washed an identical pair 10 times. When they compared them side by side, the dry cleaned pair looked as good as they did on day one, only softer, where the pair that was washed looked older and lost color.

As I said in the comments yesterday. My test, however, has nothing to do with washing vs dry cleaning. It has to do with "wearing in" the jeans for 6 months, and then washing them, in water, for the first time, so that the raw denim would shrink the 1-5%. That will, according to the experts, give me a really good fit.

I hope everyone learnt something about the dry cleaning though. As always, comments are welcome, because there's always more to learn.