Caring for Vestments

A chasuble may be worn twenty times a year and expected to last thirty years. Almost everything that shortens that life happens in the sacristy rather than the sanctuary: a hot iron, a wire hanger, a plastic bag, a well-meant attempt on a wax spot.

Immediately after a service

Take the garment off carefully rather than pulling it over the head by the hem, which is what stretches necklines and splits shoulder seams. Hang it straight away on a broad, shaped hanger — never wire — and leave it in the open air for an hour or two before it goes into a press or a vestment chest. Vestments are worn over other clothing in a warm building and they carry moisture away with them; sealing that moisture into a cupboard is how a set acquires a smell that no cleaning removes.

Check the hem and the front edges while it is hanging. Wax, oil and wine are all easier to deal with in the first hour than the following week.

Cleaning, by cloth

Dry clean less often than you think. Every clean takes something out of a figured cloth. A chasuble worn for a season and aired properly usually does not need cleaning at all; a cassock worn weekly might want it once or twice a year.

Candle wax

The commonest accident, and the one most often made worse.

1. Let it set completely hard. Do not touch it while it is soft.
2. Lift the raised wax away gently with a fingernail or the blunt edge of a plastic card. Do not scrape at the weave.
3. On a washable cloth: place the mark between two sheets of plain white blotting or brown paper and press with a warm — not hot — iron, moving the paper as it absorbs. Never iron directly onto the cloth, and never do this near embroidery.
4. On brocade, damask, silk, velvet or anything embroidered: stop after step two and take it to a specialist cleaner. Heat sets the oil in the wax and drives the residual stain permanently into the fibres.

Wine, oil and other marks

• Wine. Blot, do not rub. Cool water on a white cloth, working from the outside of the mark inwards. Nothing else — salt, soda water and household stain removers all risk the dye.
• Chrism and consecrated oils. Blot and leave it to a specialist. Oil spreads with any attempt at home treatment. Where the oil is consecrated, ask your own tradition how the cloth should properly be handled before any cleaning at all.
• Lipstick and make-up on an amice or collar. Do not rub. A specialist cleaner will remove it; rubbing turns a surface mark into a set one.
• Ink. Blot and take it in. Nothing sold for home use is safe on figured cloth.

The general rule holds: blot, never rub; cool, never hot; less, never more.

Pressing

Most vestments do not need an iron. Creases from travel usually hang out overnight, and a bathroom filled with steam from a hot shower — with the garment hanging clear of the water — will take out the rest.

When you must press: use a pressing cloth, keep the iron cool, work on the reverse, and keep the iron away from every piece of metallic thread. Goldwork and couched metal threads flatten permanently under heat and cannot be raised again. Never press velvet under any circumstances — use steam held above the pile, or send it out.

Hanging and storage

• Broad, shaped hangers. Wire hangers put the entire weight of a heavy chasuble onto two points and will deform the shoulders within a year.
• Hang, do not fold. Folded brocade develops permanent creases along the fold lines, and folded metallic embroidery cracks.
• Room to hang. Vestments crushed together in a press crease each other. If a chest is the only option, interleave with acid-free tissue and refold along different lines each season.
• Cotton or linen covers, never plastic. Plastic traps moisture and, over years, its plasticisers can migrate into the cloth and yellow it. Breathable covers only.
• Dark and dry. Direct sunlight fades liturgical colours quickly — reds and violets first. Damp is worse: it brings mildew, which is not reversible.
• Stoles rolled, not folded. Roll around a tube or hang full length.

Moths and damp

Wool cassocks and habits are what moths want. Air them, brush them and check them at the change of each season; moth damage begins where the cloth is undisturbed. Use cedar or lavender rather than naphthalene mothballs, which leave a smell in figured cloth that is very difficult to remove.

In a damp sacristy, get the vestments off an outside wall and get air moving. A cheap dehumidifier in a stone vestry has saved more sets than any cleaning ever will.

Travelling with vestments

Roll rather than fold, with tissue in the roll. Pack the heaviest garment at the bottom. Hang everything immediately on arrival, and if there is time, hang it in a steamy bathroom. For clergy who travel constantly, a good polyester crepe alb and stole will arrive wearable when brocade will not — see the fabric guide.

Embroidery and metallic thread

Goldwork and couched metallic threads are the most fragile part of a vestment and the most expensive to replace. Keep heat away from them, keep them out of folds, and never let a general dry cleaner treat them as ordinary decoration. If a thread lifts or a couching stitch breaks, stop wearing the garment for that piece — one loose thread pulled through a service becomes an inch of missing work.

Repairs and restoration

Most of what makes an old vestment look finished is repairable, often for a fraction of replacement:

• Dropped or worn hems, re-hemmed.
• Split or perished linings, replaced entirely.
• Lifted or missing braid and galloon, re-laid or renewed.
• Damaged orphreys, re-mounted onto sound cloth.
• Shoulder seams and necklines, rebuilt.
• Embroidered panels from a worn-out chasuble, transferred onto a new one — which keeps the piece the parish actually values.

We take in garments we did not make. Send photographs of the damage and of the whole garment to support@theclergycouture.com and we will tell you honestly whether it is worth repairing, and what it would cost. Sometimes the answer is that it is not — we would rather say so than take the work.

When to retire a vestment

Cloth that has gone thin and powdery at the shoulders, or that tears when it is handled, has reached the end of its life as a garment. Many traditions have their own customs for how a blessed vestment should be treated once it can no longer be used, and those customs take precedence over anything we could advise. What we can do is lift the embroidery and the orphrey from a garment beyond saving and mount them on new cloth, so what mattered about it continues.

Where to write

Care and repair questions: support@theclergycouture.com · +1 (628) 272 4411

Correspondence only. Garments for repair are sent to the address we issue you — please write before posting anything.