Three years of commuting and the liner has reached the point where I notice it in the office. It is a textile jacket with a removable membrane liner and armour in the shoulders, elbows and back. Everything online is either a manufacturer saying hand wash only or someone saying they have machine washed theirs for a decade with no issue. What actually happens if I get it wrong?
Do not machine wash leather, ever. For leather it is a damp cloth, a proper leather cleaner and then a conditioner, and for the inside a fabric spray and a long air out. I ruined a pair of leather gloves learning this and they came out stiff and a size smaller.
I washed mine with normal laundry detergent because I could not be bothered to buy the special stuff, and it did not leak straight away, it just stopped beading. Two months later I found out what that means in a downpour on the M6, which is that the outer soaks up about a kilo of water and you get cold from the inside out even though technically nothing came through. The wash itself is fine. Skipping the reproof is the mistake, and it cost me a genuinely miserable hour.
Slight correction to the low heat advice you will see everywhere. Many outer finishes reactivate with warmth, so a short tumble on low or twenty minutes with a hairdryer at a distance often restores beading without any reproofing product at all. Check the care label first because a laminated shell and a bonded one behave differently, but do not skip straight to buying a bottle of anything.
True for a finish that is still there. On a three year old commuting jacket the finish is usually worn off the shoulders and forearms rather than just flattened, and heat cannot bring back what has abraded away.
The smell is usually the liner and the collar rather than the whole jacket. Wash those and air the shell in the garden for a day before committing to a full cycle. Also hang it up after every ride instead of leaving it in a bundle in the hallway, which is the actual cause.
@hotswap_hana · 2mo ago · 3 replies
Armour out, all zips and velcro closed, technical wash rather than detergent, gentle cycle, no fabric softener, no bleach, low or no spin if the machine lets you. Detergent leaves a residue that attracts water and that is what kills the outer finish, not the washing. Then dry it and reproof the outer shell with a wash-in or spray-on product and it will bead again.
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@coldstorage_cy · 2mo ago
Separately and gently, and never reproof the membrane liner itself, only the outer shell. The liner is the waterproof part and the shell is the part that should shed water so the liner is not sitting in a wet sponge.
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@tessa_ondrak · 2mo ago
Does the removable liner go in with it or separately?
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