How do you clean a ballroom collar?

[Yliander]

How do you clean a ballroom collar?

My dance partner has a DSI stretch shirt – that is easy to wash I do it by hand – but am considering doing it in a net wash bag in the machine next time - although a little worried about what that will do to the stiff front and cuffs.

But on to the reason for this thread - the detachable collar – I’m not so sure on how to go about cleaning/washing it....


PS –if there is already a thread around on this I’m sorry – I did a search but it came up blank

[fascination]

bleach pen by clorox

[etp777]

Talk to the pastor/vicar at any local catholic/lutheran church that still wears a traditional starched collar and black shirt and ask them where they get their collars cleaned and pressed. Properly pressing one of these collars takes a special machine, can't do it at home with an iron, but most cities have at least one cleaners, generally in a heavily Catholic area, that still knows how to deal with these collars.

[cornutt]

How do they get the yellow out? I just discarded a tux shirt; it was time for it to go anyway, but one of the problems was I couldn't get the collar clean anymore. Before our last comp a couple of weeks ago, I made one last heroic effort to get it white again. It just laughed at bleach and Oxiclean. My DW's method -- saturate with undiluted Wisk, scrub, put aside, and let stew for a week -- only helped a bit.

[nucat78]

I've had some luck with hydrogen peroxide - buy as strong a solution as you can get. Much cheaper than Oxyclean and I think the main ingredient anyway.

Usually though, by the time the collar dirt is really noticeable, it's time to toss the shirt. (And I just bought a new tux shirt yesterday, so I hope it lasts awhile.)

[etp777]

I highly suggest the Golden Fleece Formal shirt from Brooks Brothers with detachable collar. Besides having all the features of a classic formal shirt (detachable collar, vest loop, pants loop, stiff starched front, access hole for hand so you can get studs through the stiff front, etc), removable collar lets you replace jsut the collar when it's too dirty, and gives you options on collar height, type of collar (wing vs laydown etc) and so on.

But anywya, BOT. Blech definitely won't work for some stains, needs to be cleaned, not just covered over with bleach.

[Standarddancer]

My partner tried dry cleaning and hand wash (by soap, bleaching pen or stain removal pen), both worked ok. Hand washing very time-consuming so usually when we travel and no time to wash, we give shirts to hotel laundry service and they usually do good job.

[Joe]

I highly suggest the Golden Fleece Formal shirt from Brooks Brothers with detachable collar.
Shirts at two bills gets expensive when you like to change shirts between rounds!

[etp777]

I wasn't suggesting it for dancing, was suggesting it for a regular formal shirt. Actually haven't found a shirt yet (not that Iv'e been looking all that long) that I really like for smooth. May try this one out next time I compete, whenever that is, but I don't suggest it yet. :)

[VTDancer]

The plastic collars I have seem to clean up well with just dish detergent.

[Standarddancer]

really? then I'll mention to my partner.