Everything But The Weed

Approved by:
Linda Maze, a Wedding photography Gainesville FL in Gainesville Florida

Costumes can be quite costly these days.  Why not try to make your costume and the money you spent on it as long as you can?  Caring for your costume will help keep it looking like new for many years.  I have a roman soldier costume and will refer to this item in the following paragraphs to teach you how to properly care for you own costume.

The first area you should look into after wearing your costume is cleaning your costume.  Making sure you take off all sweat and dirt within 24 hours of use will help make the cleaning process easier and will prevent stains from moving in.  Cleaning practices will vary based off what kind of costume you have, but here are some basic tips.

When cleaning cloth, make sure you read the tag to determine how it needs to be cleaned.  When a tag says “dry clean only”, you should take its advice and bring it to a dry cleaner.  Others may be washed but not dried, and for some it may not matter at all.

Washing down a metallic costume will be more intense than placing a cloth costume in the washing machine.  The roman armor I use for my medieval soldier costume has a large amount of metallic pieces to clean between wear.  This metal is not stainless steel and will rust if it is not dried properly.  I try to use a moist cloth to wipe down the metal pieces and only use polish when the shine is starting to get very dull.  This ensures that the metal stays in the best condition it can be in.

You will find that your costume will eventually need to be repaired.  Materials made from cloth should be fixed at a professional shop.  My strategy is to find an exact thread match to bring to my local seamstress.  I’ve found that she does not always use the exact same color thread when I do not do this.

Repairing parts of the costume that are not made of cloth can be much more difficult.  You may want to contact your seller or manufacturer and explain to them which pieces are broken so they can sell you an exact replica of the damaged piece.  I once put a dent in my roman armor and found out the hard way that it could not be fixed by banging the dent out with a hammer.The last area you should look into is costume storage.  

You will want to make sure that you store it with cedar so that moths will not destroy the fabric. Also take care to keep the costume in a dry area, since moisture can eventually lead to mold which will destroy a costume just as easily as a moth.