A leotard costs several times what a plain shirt costs, gets worn four or five times a week, and is soaked through by the end of every class. Dance wear is built on elastane, and elastane fails in a particular way that a hot wash and a dryer bring on years early. Most of it is retired for fit rather than for wear.
What dance wear is actually made of
The stretch comes from elastane, sold under the names spandex and Lycra, blended into nylon or polyester at somewhere between ten and thirty percent.
That small share does all the work. The nylon gives the surface and the strength, and the elastane gives the recovery, which is the pull back to shape after every stretch.
Elastane is a soft polymer with limited tolerance for heat, chlorine, oil and ultraviolet light. Each of those breaks the long molecules that give it spring.
When it goes, it does not tear or split. It goes slack, and a slack leotard sags at the leg line and across the shoulder and never comes back.
So the failure stays invisible right up until it is total. Nothing looks wrong, and then one day the garment simply does not fit.
Everything else here follows from that. The job with dance wear is protecting a small quantity of stretchy polymer inside a garment that is worn very hard.
Heat is what ends dance wear early
Hot water and a hot dryer shorten the life of a leotard far more than the dancing does.
Heat relaxes elastane permanently. The fibre comes out of a hot cycle longer than it went in and it does not pull back.
A dryer adds tumbling to the heat, and the tumbling abrades the fibre surface, which is what makes fabric go dull and slightly pilled after a few months.
Ironing one is worse again, and there is no reason to iron a leotard.
Radiators are the version of this that people forget about. A garment left over a hot radiator overnight has been through a low dryer cycle in slow motion.
Cool water and air drying, every time and without exception, is the whole method. It is not complicated and it is not optional.
The wash itself
Hand washing takes about five minutes and it is the right option for anything expensive.
Cool water, a small amount of mild detergent dissolved before the garment goes in, gentle pressing rather than rubbing, and a soak of no more than ten minutes.
Rinse until the water runs clear. Detergent left in the fibre stiffens it and gives odour somewhere to stay.
Press the water out between two towels. Never wring, because twisting stretches elastane at the moment it is weakest, which is while it is wet.
Where it goes in a machine, put every piece into a mesh bag, use a cold delicate cycle, and choose the lowest spin the machine offers.
Wash dance wear alongside other soft items rather than with jeans, towels, or anything carrying a zip, a hook or a strip of hook and loop fastening.
No fabric softener at any point. It coats the fibre, cuts stretch recovery, and stops the fabric moving sweat away, which is the opposite of what a garment worn to saturation needs.
The wet leotard left balled in a bag
This is the most common way a good leotard is ruined and it takes one evening to do it.
A soaked garment rolled into a bag after class sits warm and airless until the next morning at the earliest, and often longer than that.
The odour that comes out of it is the obvious half of the problem and it is the smaller half.
The larger half is that hours of damp weaken elastane and bring mildew marking on pale colours, and mildew marks on white or pale pink do not come out.
So the rule is a simple one. It comes out of the bag when the dancer gets home, every time, with no decision to be made about it.
Where it cannot be washed that evening, rinse it in cool water and hang it up. A rinse takes a minute and removes most of the sweat and the salt.
Salt is worth naming separately. Dried sweat leaves salt crystals sitting in the fibre, and those are abrasive every time the garment moves.
Tights, which snag on everything
Tights are the piece of dance wear destroyed by other laundry rather than by being worn.
They catch on zips, hooks, hook and loop fastening and the rough side of almost anything, and one pull runs the length of a leg.
Wash them in a bag on their own, or hand wash them, and never in with anything that fastens.
Convertible and footed tights hold more sweat in the foot than anywhere else, so rinse them after every use even on days they are not being washed.
Turn them inside out to wash, since the inside is the side that was against skin all evening.
Air dry over a rail rather than pegged at a single point, and keep them away from a radiator, which is where the elastic goes first.
Buy them in numbers and rotate them. Tights worn on consecutive days last less than half as long as the same tights worn alternately.
Drying and rotation
Dry flat wherever there is room. A wet leotard hung by the shoulder straps carries all of its own water weight on the two narrowest parts of it.
A drying rack, a towel on a flat surface, or a hanger with the garment folded over the bar rather than suspended from the straps all work.
Keep it out of direct sun, which fades dye and degrades elastane, and away from any heat source.
Turn it over partway through so the underside gets air.
Rotation is the thing that genuinely extends the life of a dance wear wardrobe. Elastane needs time out of use to recover its shape, and roughly a full day is what it takes.
Three leotards rotated across a week last considerably longer than the same three worn two days running, which is worth knowing before buying a fourth.
Costumes, sequins, and when elastic is finished
Performance costumes are a separate category from everyday dance wear and most of them are hand clean only, whatever the base fabric happens to be.
Sequins and appliqué are frequently glued rather than stitched, and water plus agitation lifts them off in numbers. Spot clean with a damp cloth and a trace of mild detergent, and stop there.
Anything with boning, hooks or a structured bodice gets the same treatment and dries flat, away from heat.
Air a costume after every wear instead of washing it, and it gets through a season in good condition.
Elastic is finished when the garment stops returning. Pull the leg line gently and let go, and if it comes back slowly or not at all, the elastane has gone.
The other sign is a garment that fits at the start of a class and does not fit by the end of it.
There is no repair for that. Washing a slack leotard more carefully does not bring it back, so it becomes a rehearsal piece and something else takes its place.
The Saint Paul part
Class runs right through a long winter here, so the heaviest use of a dance wear wardrobe lands in the months when everything happens indoors and nothing goes out on a line. That means the drying method has to work inside a house for five or six months at a stretch.
Heated indoor air in winter is dry, and that turns out to be genuinely useful. A leotard pressed between two towels and laid flat dries in a few hours in a heated house, which makes flat drying practical on a school night rather than something skipped because there is not time for it.
The temptation that arrives with the heating is the radiator or the floor vent, and that is the one thing to resist. Dry warm air moving through a room is fine and it is doing the work already. The same heat applied directly relaxes elastane and takes a season off the garment. Keep it a few feet clear and let the room do it.
Water around here leans hard, and mineral content leaves a film on fine synthetics that makes a leotard feel slightly stiff and look flat after a few months. A smaller dose of detergent, an extra rinse, and an occasional wash with a little washing soda in it keeps the fabric behaving the way it did when it was new.
Where a gentle load still rinses clean
Fine synthetics need water volume more than they need a gentle setting, since what spoils them is residue rather than force.
The machines at our self-service laundry on Maryland Avenue East put enough water through a cycle that a delicate load of leotards and tights actually rinses, and a large drum lets a small load move freely instead of being pressed against itself the whole time.
Our machines and the store are cleaned daily.
Our wash-dry-fold service covers the everyday laundry.
For general guidance, The American Cleaning Institute publishes a fabric care guide that is a useful cross-check.
The short version
Dance wear is ten to thirty percent elastane, and heat is what ends it. Wash cool by hand or in a mesh bag on a cold delicate cycle with the lowest spin, use a small amount of mild detergent, and never use fabric softener, which coats the fibre and cuts stretch recovery. Never wring, and never leave a wet leotard balled in a bag, since damp weakens elastane and marks pale colours. Wash tights in a bag on their own and turn them inside out. Dry flat, out of sun and clear of radiators. Rotate garments so each gets a full day to recover, and retire anything that no longer springs back.
WaveMAX Saint Paul is at 1320 Maryland Ave E #105, easy to reach from Saint Paul and the surrounding area. If you have bedding that will not fit at home, call us at 651-528-6972.