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" The other day I bought an on-sale black jersey dress from one of my favorite imported Canadian stores, Aritzia, down in SoHo. I took it home, wore it twice, and decided it needed a wash. The label said: &amp;quot;DRY-CLEAN ONLY&amp;quot;&amp;amp;#8212;all caps. But there&amp;#x27;s no way I was going to spend $10 dry-cleaning a $36 dress. So I took a chance and threw it in the washing machine. And guess what. It was fine. If you, like me, have long suspected that tacking a &amp;quot;Dry-Clean Only&amp;quot; label onto every and any garment is just a catch-all insurance policy retailers and brands slap onto their garments to preclude customers from ruining flimsy items in the wash, you&amp;#x27;re probably right. And that&amp;#x27;s not just me talking&amp;amp;#8212;that&amp;#x27;s experts. &amp;quot;Dry-clean-only labels are often put on as &amp;#x27;cover all&amp;#x27; by the manufacturers,&amp;quot; laundry, and dry-cleaning consultancy director Richard Neale told the Daily Mail. &amp;quot;Whether they are needed is often guesswork&amp;amp;#8212;so you have as much chance of getting a good result by washing as by sending them to a dry-cleaners.&amp;quot; The newspaper put five different &amp;quot;dry-clean only&amp;quot; pieces through the wash&amp;amp;#8212;and recorded the results. They found that polyester, cashmere, and even silk fared really well&amp;amp;#8212;but a tailored suit and embellished top didn&amp;#x27;t quite come out of the machine intact. You can check out the whole rigmarole right here. In my personal experience&amp;amp;#8212;and I&amp;#x27;m emphasizing personal here, so it&amp;#x27;s anecdotal, and take it all with a grain of salt and proceed cautiously&amp;amp;#8212;I have no problem washing things like natural wools and cashmeres on gentle cold cycles. Silks make me nervous, so I&amp;#x27;ll usually dry-clean those. And I&amp;#x27;ve done things like try to wash dry-clean-only jeans that have special finishes, and that&amp;#x27;s always turned out disastrously&amp;amp;#8212;so now I just avoid buying denim that&amp;#x27;s dry-clean-only because, come on, it&amp;#x27;s denim and I&amp;#x27;ll wear it all the time, so I&amp;#x27;ll need to wash it. Polyester is almost always safe in the machine. And if I have something like a delicate cashmere sweater or light-knit wool that I&amp;#x27;m pretty sure I can toss in the machine but don&amp;#x27;t really want to risk it? I&amp;#x27;ll just hand-wash it in the sink or something. What washing labels do you ignore? Tell us your top money-saving washing tips in the comments below!"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/fashion/blogs/dressed/2014/03/can-you-wash-clothes-that-clai>