Care and Cleaning of Ties

A tie  creases easily and it can get stained. If you want your favourite ties to have a long life you have to look after them.


Care

• Meal times are the most dangerous moments for a tie, soup stains for example.

• Be careful if you put on perfume.

• Untie your necktie (quite gently) every time you take it off.Loosen tie first, then pull the loop over your head and at last open it completely. Then wrap the tie around your hand and place the bundle like this at least for the night. Crinkles and creases will usually be gone by the next morning, If not, a bit of hot steam from the iron will do. 

• In case you actually do need to iron your tie, put a clean cotton or linen cloth between iron and silk. But never completely flatten your necktie with the iron, it is supposed to keep its tubular texture and shape.

  Cleaning

• Remove stains immediately, if possible. Or  take some emergency measures. First remove dirt, e.g. trying to carefully scratch off egg yolk with a clean knife (or back of knife) or to dab off tomato sauce with a napkin. Try to avoid rubbing in the unwanted substance deeper into the fabric. After that, the stain – depending on the kind - has to be treated further.

• One way to remove greasy stains from the fabric could be to take a smooth cloth without fluff, put soap on it and try to rub the stain off. But this might lead to spreading the stain further on the tie, especially when you have dampened the cloth. A stain remover means less risk, but is not always at hand. Ethyl alcohol works really well and should be around in most cases. Because of the easy availability as well as the low cost many people tend to swear by it.

• Stains on a silk tie are almost impossible to remove completely. If you can rush the damaged tie to a professional cleaning service there may be special products to save it.

• After stains, the other difficult thing to avoid is creasing. Ties do not generally survive well under a hot iron. A better way is to let the creased tie hang peacefully in a damp environment to lose its creases slowly and gently. 

Storage  

• In principle, ties can be kept hanging or lying down. The single exception is knitted ties: they should always be stored horizontally because otherwise they might wear out.

• Hang the tie over the crossbar of a hanger, smooth ties might slide down. Watch out that sharp edges do not damage the fabric.

• A rough pre-selection makes sense, e.g. one hanger for striped ties, another one for ties with motifs, one for ties with geometrical patterns etc.

• Storing your ties is the same as other clothes: they should not hang too tightly in the closet so that the air can circulate sufficiently.

•  Neckties need to be protected against the sun, dust, humidity and, if applicable, moths. If you have enough space in your closet for an extra drawer to keep ties wrapped up and clearly arranged, would be a delightful sight, and tedious searching within the shallows of his closet would become superfluous. Thus, you can either fold your ties in the middle (depending on the size of the drawer) or wrap them up. The latter will allow for a better appearance and at the same time will maintain the ties since creases will disappear with the wrapping.

•  When travelling, your ties will be well protected if you keep them rolled up in a solid box. Better still, treat yourself, and your ties, to a specially designed tie case.

Resouce : www.tieknot.com   http://www.winsorties.co.uk/tiecare.html