Care and Cleaning of Your Santa Costume
Because most Santa’s perspire heavily during a visit with the children, and sometimes even are the recipient of a wetting; it is recommended that the Santa outfit be cleaned on a regular basis; and in general, dry cleaning is probably the best way to do the cleaning.
BUT (notice that’s all caps) the white trim might become permanently yellowed after a dry cleaning or two or a few. Also dry cleaning rarely removes the lipstick and rouge stains that we mentioned earlier.
If the trim is felt, then the best thing you can do is dry clean the entire outfit. If the trim is a plush like material, it should be removed and then laundered to both clean it, and fluff it out to bring it back to its almost original appearance.
If possible, and you have a little time, it’s best to strip off the white trim and launder (as in Tide or Oxydol) it using a washer and dryer. The first time you do this it is very time consuming because of the closeness of the stitches. It’s much easier the second time IF you baste the white trim back on instead of machine sewing it back on.
Caveat: Washing the entire suit, including the white trims, will probably cause the red to bleed into the white, thus giving you a nice red suit with PINK trim.