Cleaning Lamé ?

[Love Charles]

Hi all, Curious if any of you have had good results cleaning/dry cleaning 20s lamé ? Or bad results! I found a couple "farm fresh" 20s coats that I am pretty desperate to try to bring back to life but I have no experience with the material.
Any shared experiences will be helpful, thanks!

 

[Circa Vintage Clothing]

I haven't dry cleaned '20s lamé. I'm too worried about condition so I recommend airing it out if an item needs it, otherwise I would leave be. Likewise, I don't recommend laundering.

 

[Jasmin Key]

Take Nicole's advice. I have tried soaking a lamé wedding dress from around 1915. Someone had already washed it at some point, so I had nothing to lose as the damage was done plus it was black with dirt and tarnish. The problem with lamé is the silk is very likely to shrink, but the metal threads won't. You then get a rippled effect which is near impossible to remove.

I'll try and dig out a photo of the rippling.

 

[Jonathan]

There really isn't anything you can do because the metal on the threads is so thin that any type of cleaning to return any lustre to the tarnish will remove the metal entirely. Vacuuming is about the best you can do.