Caring For You Wool Gabardine Pants

You can find a lot of trousers, suits, overcoats and other garments made in gabardine. What is gabardine? Gabardine is a kind of fabric which is a smooth and resilient fabric, tightly woven and not shiny. Gabardine had been traditionally made of wool, but nowadays, you can find it in polyester or polyester blends.

How do you care for gabardine pants or slacks, or your gabardine suit? Gabardine, being a strong and resilient fabric is said to be easy care. It is resistant to wrinkling, and the wool type is quite lightweight. Throughout the year, you can comfortably wear your gabardine pants or suit with not so much trouble.

If you intent to shop around for gabardine pants, should you opt for polyester or wool? Polyester being a synthetic fabric is not particularly breathable. So wearing a pair of wool gabardine pants is apt to be more comfortable than wearing polyester gabardine pants, especially in certain weather. But when it comes to fabric care, polyester is easier than wool.

Clothing manufacturers tend to err on the cautious side when it comes to gabardine fabric care. For instance, in terms of wool gabardine care, the warning in the tag often says “Dry Clean Only”. But then again, dry cleaning can be very expensive, and you can only look for an alternative if you are on a budget. To keep you wool gabardine pants or garment clean, you can opt for hand washing with a wool- friendly detergent, such as Woolite.

You can even machine wash a wool gabardine garment, so long as you keep the machine in a delicate or gentle cycle. Often, washing machines indicate which cycle is suitable for washing wool. And there’s a garment bag for added protection and you can also turn the garment inside out. But see to it that you’re using a wool friendly detergent. If it so happens that your fabric has a stain, then by all means, it’s reasonable to pay for dry cleaning.

And don’t ever put wool gabardine in the dryer. Wool takes a long time to dry and if you hurry by machine drying it, you would end up destroying the fabric.

It is of course easier to care for polyester gabardine. You can machine wash the fabric, and either in a cool or warm cycle. But be certain that your garment gets a cool water- rinse afterwards. You can also machine dry polyester gabardine, unless it’s a stretch fabric or a polyester blend in which case it’s better to line dry. Unlike wool, polyester dries faster.

Manufacturers often indicate that polyester gabardine is for “Dry Cleaning Only” in the same way as wool should be. If dry cleaning is too expensive for you, you can hand wash the fabric, especially if you are wary about machine washing it.

And if you are planning to buy wool gabardine pants or suit, expect to shell out a decent amount money. You can uncover bargains but wool gabardine pants for less than $50 are a rare find.