Faux Fur Coat Maintenance
Mar 15, 2011 by Violet
Now that it’s getting chilly again here, last week I decided to get out the big fluffy jacket that I customised last year. We don’t have a huge amount of space so it had been squished up the back of my closet during the Summer and really needed some TLC! After giving it a thorough hand wash and leaving it to dry completely as I had suspected the faux fur became matted and pretty gross so I set about cleaning it up and getting it back to it’s former glory ^_^
You can see it just after drying on the left and after I finished fixing it on the right:
| And again left-bad, right-good.
The first thing I did was sprinkle a little rose scented talcum powder (or whatever the version is that doesn’t contain actual talcum etc) through the strands of faux fur. This helped to loosen the hairs up and prevent them from getting caught on each other.
After making sure the powder had gotten through evenly I used my hair brush (which has short nylon bristles) to gently separate the strands. To begin with I brushed in the same direction as the pile but this didn’t catch the smaller pieces of hair so I found that making small circular motions provided the best result.
As faux fur is essentially plastic how well it can handle brushing will depend on the quality it is, think of it as being the difference between brushing a really cheap shiny wig and one made from nicer matt fibres.
A close up of after:
Good as new! I generally try to give the pile a going over with the brush once a week because faux fur has a tendency to leave little hairs everywhere no matter how careful you are or how any washes it’s been through. You can see how much of the pile came out in the brush, I don’t want to be breathing that in every time I put on the jacket *_*
I’ve never lived somewhere cold enough that I needed to do stuff like this, do you guys have seasonal rituals like changing the clothes in your closet? *winter noob* hahaha! |
I’ve only been in Brisbane just over a year, so most of my clothes are more wintery. I have one suitcase full of winter stuff and half of my wardrobe too! Slowly, I am able to use some of it again, but unfortunately Brisbane does not get that cold. Time to move I think! ^_^
Yes, come to Melbourne and use all of your Winter clothes :D Brisbane isn’t so great for Winter.
Hi there,
Thank you so much for this tutorial, I have often had this problem and never known what to do about it. Often I wouldn’t wear the clothing because of how it looked and then land up giving it away. Now I don’t have to do that anymore. ^_^
I’m very glad to help, I feel the same way about faux fur after it’s been washed >_< I hope it works as well on your coats too! <3
Hey,thank you this is a very useful tip! <3
Can you please post a tutorial on how to maintain wigs? How to style them or wash them?
I only have hair pieces not wigs at the moment but as soon as I get some I definitely will :d
Having lived in a cold climate my entire life, the change to winter isn’t all that much of a big deal. It’s sort of gradual, first you start getting into the sweaters and heavier skirts, ten you might get out a leather coat, then sometime in December or January you get out a down coat and fluff it a bit. I guess the only thing that happens all at once is the getting out of my boots.
Boots are definitely a necessity in Winter, I’m looking forward to bringing mine out again!
When spring rolls around here in the U.S, I live in the northeast so we’re all usually very excited for winter to end. I go through all my clothes, see what needs to be donated and then enjoy seeing my old spring/summer clothes again! It’s like going shopping, but much cheaper! ;)
That sounds lovely! I keep finding summer dresses I completely forgot about in the back of my cupboard too XD
This is gonna be super useful in the future I think. Thanks so much!
I live in the U.S Pacific North West. It rains all the freaking time (we have our own Rain Forest) but nobody uses umbrellas, and crazy people wear flip flops and shorts when it snows. In short, no ritual, just a crazy person that wears the same articles of clothing year round.
XD That sounds crazy!! *_* The second it gets even a little bit cold I’m running to get jumpers haha!
That worked really well! :-) I have an enormous fake-fur jacket that belonged to my grandma that could do with some grooming. I’ll have to give this a go! (Even if just to get it into saleable condition, because I don’t think I’d ever wear it. It looks too realistic!! >_<)
I hope it works well for you too <3
I live in Illinois where in the course of a week, we could go from 3 feet of snow to 50°F weather (No exaggeration, that actually happened earlier this year!), so it would be too impractical to get rid of our winter wear. We just put the winter things to the side, because you can never tell when that nice, comfortable 60°F weather will suddenly turn wintery!
Your weather sounds crazy! Here in Melbourne our slogan is “4 seasons in 1 day” XD It does make it quite hard to pick out an outfit.
Aimiya, same problem here. I’m in PA and the winter weather here is so fickle. In my area we generally don’t wear winter coats. Most of the time you can get away with a nice lined hoodie or sweatshirt. I guess the only winter ritual is getting my sweaters and cardigans out of the vacuume packs and fluffing the out on the closeline
I love vacuum packs! So useful for places with not much storage :D
That’s clever! :D
We have it here, when spring is coming around, we do “springcleaning” of some sort, haha. All the warm clothing like wool and fleece and such go into boxes and we bring the summery stuff out :)
I always forget you guys are on different seasons to us! >_<
Aww thank you for this tip! Now I’ll be able to maintain my sheep carpet in a good shape! Thank you SO much!!
No problems! Glad to help :D
aww ive just put my coat away!
(England here) as for weather/clothing…i used to empty my wardrobe every year at april pack everything in boxes and put in summery clothes…then swap in late september now tho…im lazy and actually have 2 wardrobes! one summery clothes ..one wintery…im picking between both at minute (daytime temp around 18c night down to freezing)glad its finally getting warmer in day now..its been a looooonnnggg winter :)
I miss having two wardrobes ;_; We haven’t really had a proper Summer this year so everyone’s dreading Winter here but I love it!
I have a question. I own a black coat with black fur, and it got coffee on the fur part. The coat is dry clean only. I cannot afford dry cleaning. But I can afford a Tide pen. So I want to know if trying to spot clean the fur will kill my poor coat.
I think it would depend if it’s real fur or faux, to be honest though I don’t know a huge amount about stain removal. I can’t imagine a tide pen damaging it but I would probably try some natural methods first just in case. Sorry I couldn’t help more!