Looking After Your Evening Wear

The morning after a ball is not when most people want to think about laundry. The clothes are on the bedroom chair, the gown is over the back of the door, the kilt is folded in a way it should not be folded, and somewhere there is a glass of water you cannot remember pouring.

The trouble is that the first day after a ball often decides what condition your clothes are in for when you next need them. Sweat, deodorant, foundation, red wine, lipstick on a wing collar and a smear of mud on a hem all get harder to remove the longer they sit. In summer this matters more. Heat sets stains. A silk bodice left crumpled overnight in 25 degree heat will not look the same a fortnight later.

For most of us, buying couture ballgowns or white tie eveningwear is not a daily occurrence. You want your outfits to last. We're here to help. What follows is what to do straight after the ball, what is safe to do at home, and where in the UK to send the pieces that really need a specialist.

 

Before you go to bed

Spend five minutes on the clothes before you sleep. It is the most useful thing you will do all weekend.

• Hang every piece properly. Even through a haze of tiredness and champagne this one matters. Tailcoat on a shaped wooden hanger. Gown on a padded or wide-shouldered hanger, with any internal loops used to take the weight off the straps. Use a fabric suit bag if you have one, otherwise hang without overnight.
• Get the clothes away from each other. A heap is the enemy. Wool especially needs air to recover.
• Open a window if you can. A bedroom that has hosted you, your other half, two pairs of dancing shoes and a worn ball gown is humid, and humidity is what you are trying to get out of the fibres.

 

The next day

When you’re back home with your clothes the next day, take a look at them in daylight. It’s time to take stock.

Walk slowly through:

• Underarms of shirts, waistcoats and bodices. Sweat marks may not be visible yet but salt will be drying in.
• Collars. Foundation on a wing collar, lipstick from a goodbye kiss on the lapel of a tailcoat.
• Hems. Mud, grass, candle wax from a long table, the chalky outline of a sprung floor.
• Lining at the back of the neck. Hair products, suntan lotion and bronzer all transfer here in summer.

Note where everything is. You are going to tell your cleaner exactly what is where, and on what fabric. Specialist cleaners universally say the same thing: tell them the stain and the source and they can treat it. Leave them to guess, and they cannot.

Resist the temptation to scrub silk, satin, lace, tulle or anything embroidered or beaded yourself. The same goes for anything described as couture. Beads on ballgowns are often hand-attached, sequins crack, lace pulls. Leave these to the professionals. 

The morning after is also a useful moment to note any wardrobe issues. Broken buttons, little tears, all these things you’ll remember at the time but will absolutely not in two months when you need them next.

Top tip: Make a note on your phone of the things you need to sort. Even if you can’t get to them straight away, at least you’ll be able to refer back to it when your next formal event is a few weeks away and you’re starting to think about your outfit. 

 

What you can safely do at home

Some things are worth doing yourself. They buy you time before the garment reaches the cleaner.

Brush off mud

Mud on a hem? Let it dry completely. Then brush it off with a clothes brush. Do not rub a wet cloth on wet mud, particularly into silk or wool. You are only pushing the colour deeper into the fibre. Brushing generally is a good thing to do with any sort of clothes you don’t wash regularly.

Clean your dress shirt

Sweat inevitably builds up on the underarm and collar of a cotton dress shirt. Get your shirt wet in cold water and add some mild detergent (or blue fairy liquid in a pinch) and gently rub the fabric together with the detergent to create a lather. This will help get the soap into those places and prevent staining over time. 

After this, cold soak the shirt with a little bit of stain remover powder, then wash cold/cool. The aim of the first wash is to get the stains out without setting any in. Hang the shirt to dry, don’t tumble dry it. You can wash again on a higher setting for hygiene later once you know it’s spotless. 

Heat at any stage is not a good idea: Aluminium in modern antiperspirants reacts with the proteins in sweat to form the yellow gel that bonds to cotton, and heat from a hot wash or a tumble drier is what locks it in. 

If you decide to send your shirt off for cleaning rather than doing it yourself, ask for for hand washing and hand finishing rather than the standard tumble-and-press service. One of the signs that you’ve probably found a good specialist dry cleaner is that they don’t default to offering a standard wash and press when you bring in your marcella dress shirt.

Cleaning detachable collars

If your shirt has a detachable collar, it’s usually easier to get them sent away than doing it yourself. Detachable collars need their own starch. Most dry cleaners don’t know how to restarch collars. If you don’t want to try yourself, use a specialist like Barker Formalwear. 

Ballavimus controversial opinion: While much less smart, washing a detachable collar yourself and then re-starching it never gets the same result the professional can. However, they can become infinitely more comfortable to dance in with a lower amount of starch. If you have a spare collar, consider experimenting with this to see if this works for you.

Powder or surface dust

Brush off gently before it gets pressed in.

What not to do at home

Do not iron over a stain. Heat sets protein stains (sweat, wine, food) almost permanently.

Do not use supermarket stain pens or sprays on silk, satin or any embroidered piece. They are formulated for cotton.

Do not put anything beaded or embroidered into water at home. Even cool water can loosen adhesives and weaken the threads holding beads on. Couture cleaning specialists are unanimous on this.

 

White Tie and Black Tie care 

Wool barathea is a surprisingly forgiving fabric. After a normal ball it usually needs nothing more than airing for two or three days on a shaped wooden hanger and a brush down with a soft-bristled clothes brush. Dry cleaning a tailcoat after every wear is unnecessary and will, over time, dull the cloth. Once or twice a season is plenty.

There is one exception to this – if you’ve been dancing hard and sweated a lot in your evening wear, send them to the dry cleaner. You may think they don’t smell bad when you put them away. You’re right, they don’t smell bad right now. However, finding out just before the ball that they’ve ‘ripened’ in your wardrobe is just not the thing. Don’t do this to yourself. 

Your dilemma with wool clothing in general is you want to dry and air it as soon as you can. On the other hand, tiny vindictive clothes moths take great delight in eating holes out of your most expensive clothing. 

You probably store your evening wear with great care and with enough cedar blocks to recreate a forest. However, immediately after wearing them you have a problem – do you air and risk moths? The solution here is to hang your items in a cloth suit bag. This will allow airflow and so to dry your clothes. If you have to make a choice though, hang your clothes to dry completely first, then freeze them. See our other blog on this for details. 

If you were wearing white tie, your marcella bow is unlikely to be dirty. If it is, it can be hand-washed in cool water with a small amount of gentle detergent and laid flat to dry. The starch will need replacing before the next wear.

 

Highland wear

Kilt care

While the orthodoxy for storing kilts is to hang them on a specialist kilt coat hanger, we at Ballavimus have never had much luck with them. They’re often too narrow or don’t hold the kilt well enough. Instead, if you’ve got the space, laying them flat in a fabric suit carrier in your wardrobe is a great option, otherwise carefully consider rolling it up (with the pleats, towards the fringe) and storing it lying down like that. 

However, there’s a time when hanging your kilt does make sense and that is after you’ve just worn it/danced in it. Put it in a fabric suit carrier and hang it by the hanging straps or using a kilt coat hanger – you want to let the fabric breathe. If you need to, spot clean any spills with a damp cloth first. Brush gently with a soft clothes brush before storing.

Sashes care

Sashes should be hung flat or rolled loosely.

Sporran care

Sporrans can generally be left alone. Wrapping them in some non-acidic tissue paper for storage is always a good idea. If you’ve got them dirty, try a gentle brush in the direction of the hair and a wipe down of the leather with a damp cloth. The occasional bit of water on fur isn’t going to do your sporran any harm. The thing you're trying to protect here is the dressed leather skin underneath, so use as much water as necessary

Polish the cantle if it needs it. Take great care not to get polish on the fur/hair parts of the sporran.

Two very niche top tips from us on this: If you ever want to get champagne off your sporran in the Orangery in Versailles (as one does) don't use water from the hexagonal pool by the entrance because:

1. Fountains and pools often have chlorine or salt in them, which is not great for your finery.
2. You might not have tested your handkerchief to make sure it doesn't leak dye before using it. So use a table napkin instead - plain white and guaranteed to have been washed many times beforehand. 

 

When to send for cleaning, and where

Not after every ball. Wool in particular does better with airing and brushing between cleans. A rough rule:

• Anything visibly stained: send within a week, sooner for protein stains (sweat, wine, food).
• Anything that has been worn three to five times without visible stains: send for a refresh.
  
• Everything: send before it goes into long-term storage at the end of the season.

Tailors and dressmakers will usually have a strong view about who they trust for their own work, especially with anything heavily embellished. Very often they will offer dry cleaning services for pieces they’ve made themselves. This is usually the best option for very bespoke items such as jackets with silver buttons that can’t be removed directly.

In terms of what dry cleaners to use in general, when it comes to evening wear, always use a specialist dry cleaner. Check what their Terms and Conditions are and make sure their insurance policy per item cover the cost of the garment you're having cleaned.

 

General storage tips

If you have done the work above, storage is the easy part. Three rules.

1. Breathable bags only. The plastic from the cleaner traps moisture and yellows silk and wool over time. Transfer everything into a cotton or canvas garment bag, or simply leave it uncovered in a dark wardrobe.
2. Padded or shaped hangers. Wire hangers will leave dents in the shoulders of a tailcoat or a gown in a matter of months.
3. Cool, dry, dark. Lofts and basements are not your friends. Cedar blocks or lavender sachets keep moths off the wool.
   

For gowns that need to lie flat, such as anything with heavy beadwork or hand embroidery, acid-free tissue between folds is the standard. Most specialist cleaners will return wedding-dress-grade pieces boxed this way if you ask.

 

One small thing

If you are the kind of person who dances energetically in their ball-going finest, you probably want to record those evenings. Check out our Ballroom Diaries, made especially to help you create a bank of your favourite nights to preserve for you and the generations to follow.