The uniform in the wash: how crew actually keep the thing wearable for years, and the disasters
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#1 BA, and my first uniform lasted six months because I washed it like normal clothes. My second has lasted three years because a senior crew member took pity on me and explained. This thread is that explanation, plus the disasters, because everyone has one.
The rules I now follow
The jacket never goes in a washing machine. Dry clean, twice a year, and steam between. A hand held steamer is the best 30 pounds a crew member can spend.
Shirts and blouses: wash on cool, hang immediately, never tumble. The collar and cuffs get a bar of soap rubbed on before the wash. Tumble drying is why the first uniform died.
Trousers and skirts: inside out, cool wash, hang from the waistband. Never fold on the seam and leave it, that is how you get the shiny line.
The scarf or tie: never washed. Steamed. Spot cleaned with a damp cloth. A coffee stain on a silk scarf at 6am has ended stronger people than me.
Tights: the airline ones, in a mesh bag, and buy in bulk when they are on offer because the ladder always comes on the crew bus.
Shoes: polished on Sunday, whatever happened that week. A shoe tree if you can be bothered. Insoles replaced every three months, which nobody does and everyone should.
The disasters
A red sock in with the white blouses. Pink blouses. A whole set. I wore one on a flight and the purser noticed in the briefing.
A jacket in the machine. It came out as a different, smaller jacket.
The tie left on the hotel radiator that melted, slightly, in a way that only I could see and that I could see forever.
The iron on the wrong setting on the synthetic skirt. A shiny patch the shape of the iron. I still have the skirt. It is my spare.
What has yours been and what saved the uniform?
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#2 Emirates, and the scarf rule is everything. Ours are silk and specific and the replacement cost is real. Steamer, spot clean, never wash, never iron. And the hat: never in the bag flat. It goes in the hat box or on your head. Crushed hat is a grooming check failure.
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#3 Jet2, and the red sock incident is universal. Mine was a pink dress from my daughter's wash in with my white shirts. Two weeks of borrowed shirts from the base.
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#4 Korean Air, and our uniform maintenance is almost a training module. The steaming and the shoe polish are taught. The thing I would add is a lint roller in the bag, always, because the hotel blanket fibres on a navy jacket at 5am are visible from the flight deck.
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#5 easyJet, and the insoles every three months is the advice I needed at year one and got at year three. The feet are the uniform too.
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#6 @tobiasber the feet are the uniform too. That should be on the training slides.
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#7 Lufthansa, and my disaster: the jacket dry cleaned by a hotel in Bangkok that returned it a slightly different shade of blue. I still do not know what they did. I still wear it. Nobody has noticed. Or everyone has and is being kind.