Knitwear Care | Alessandra

To ensure that your knitwear maintains its life-cycle it is important that you care for it correctly. We recommend you wash your sweater in cold water by hand or on a gentle machine cycle. Ensuring that your sweater is inside out, using mild-mix laundry liquid. Avoid using fabric softener, as this can encourage fibres to pill.

Natural fibres are at their most delicate when wet. To maintain your garment's shape, do not wring out your sweater as it is drying. For cashmere garments, we recommend that you roll your sweater up on a clean towel to draw the water out. Once rolled out, shape your sweater and lie it out in the shade to dry.

Cashmere is a high quality natural fibre, renowned for its warmth-to-weight ratio and long lifespan. Over time natural fibres can start to pill (form fuzz balls). Fabric pills are a common behaviour of these natural fibres, and prove your sweaters authenticity.

We suggest running a high quality fabric shaver lightly over your sweater to remove any pills. Our shaver of choice is Evercare. Preventing your sweater from pilling is very difficult, however, you can reduce the amount of pilling by caring for your garment properly.

Correctly storing your knitwear plays a big role in ensuring the longevity of your garments. Knits need to be stores in an airtight container or alternative cool, dry space such as a chest of drawers.

We recommend they are laundered, dried and aired prior to putting away. Using scented items such as soap or floral sachet while storing is also a great way to keep your garments at their ultimate peak and looking good year round.

Winter knitwear can hold both sentimental and financial value, and we want to minimise pesky moths damaging your garments! If you find your garment has a hole, 90% of the time is a moth hole – this has nothing to do with your environment and everything to do with a tasty soft yarn. The softer the yarn the more moths are drawn to it – it genuinely is a testament to the superior quality of the yarn we use in our knitwear!

Ensuring your garments are stored correctly, and stored alongside a scented item such as soap, scented cedarwood or dried lavender will repel moths and minimise moth holes. Cedar or sandal wood is also great for repelling silverfish which can be just as damaging to knitwear.

Care is required when wearing and caring for your lurex garment. Due to the loose weave of cashmere and lurex, these items are prone to snags and catching. This can be fixed by pulling the thread gently through to the reverse side of the garment.

Storing your garment correctly can alleviate the risk of snags and catching (see ‘storing your knits’), as well as avoiding contact with jewellery whilst handling and wearing the garment. Pulls in the fabric are to be expected given the nature of the fabric, so please treat as an extremely delicate fabric for longevity.