How to Care for Clothing With Pleats or Ruffles

How to Dewrinkle Ruffled Clothing

Silk or synthetic fabrics: A steamer is the best option for loosening crinkled flounces and frills. To avoid scorching your fingers while trying to control the wispy ripples of fabric, try this tactic: Roll tissue paper or a strip of clean white cotton around the base of a pencil and secure it with tape. Then use this tool instead of your fingers to help raise the ruffles and straighten them out while steaming (shown, top right).
 
 Cotton and linen: You’ll need an iron to get a nice, crisp finish. To avoid indenting the rest of the garment, pull the ruffle away from the garment and place it on the ironing board. With the steam turned on, place the tip of the iron on the ruffle and press a section about three to four inches long, in a semicircle motion (shown, bottom right). Move on to the next section of the ruffle and repeat.
 
 For a cluster of tiny ruffles: A steamer with a brush attachment works wonders here. If you don’t have one, hang the garment and use a burst of steam from an iron positioned about an inch away from the fabric to relax the creases, recommends Zagnoni.

 

How to Store

Since ruffles can easily become distorted and bend the wrong way in a packed closet, it helps to “make sure they are facing in the correct direction before you hang them,” says clothing designer Wenlan Chia. Taylor suggests twisting tissue paper and placing it behind a large ruffled collar to give it a little backbone.