why does a suit have to be dry cleaned?
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Some things just need to be washed differently. It’s like how your mother and I put you in the bathtub and not the dishwasher.
Because some fabrics such as silk, wool, and some synthetics degrade, shrink, wrinkle, or otherwise respond poorly to cleaning with water. Dry cleaning uses no water so the fabric remains undamaged.
If you find someone who really knows how to clean stuff, you’ll find that you don’t always have to dry clean things. The people who handle theater costumes know a ton about this, but you’re down to hand-washing in cold water with a little dish soap which takes a long time so most people just send them in.
No one here has yet mentioned that after the suit comes out of the washing machine, an expert with a steam gun/steam press re-forms any area of the suit that was bunched/wrinkled so it looks as good as the day you bought it.
The average person doesn’t have the technical knowledge to get it done at home.
Suits are relatively delicate and mechanical cleaning is hard on the fabric and can cause Pilling, damage to seams and linings, weaken buttons and fasteners etc.
Plenty of suits these days ARE machine washable, but they tend to be at least partially made of hardier synthetic materials. More expensive natural materials like linen, silk and wool are not as hardy.
A sewing teacher taught me that it is due to the use of iron-on. It is a special fabric that sticks to fabric with the heat of the iron. It thickens some pieces and reinforces some stitches. It is often used on welt pockets.
So the heat of a classical washing machine would destroy it.
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