When you come home after a successful shopping trip with a bag of new clothes, the very last place you want to take them is the laundry.
But tearing off the tags and wearing them immediately really isn’t the best idea.
According to experts, you should always wash them before you take them for a spin (boring, we know). While they may be “new” to your wardrobe, their existence didn’t start the minute you picked it up off the rack.
“You should absolutely wash clothes before you wear them, especially anything that is right next to the skin or that you will sweat on,” clothing manufacturer expert Lana Hogue told ELLE.
Plus the sweat of the 10 plus people who tried the item on in the shop before you… *shudders*
Watch: Managing Director Anne Market goes shopping for a complete makeover. Post continues after video.
One word: LICE.
“I have seen cases of lice that were possibly transmitted from trying on in the store, and there are certain infectious diseases that can be passed on through clothing,” Donald Belsito, a professor of dermatology at Columbia University Medical Centre in New York told The Wall Street Journal.
Top Comments
I LOVE the smell of new clothes and bed sheets, so I've never done it. My mother says you should always wash them first, but, I just love that 'new' smell and it would ruin it.
I hate that new chemical smell that's why i wash them!
I wash new clothes purely because of the chemical or whatever smell they have. I've got sensitive skin so that's a must for me.
I'm not overly scared of bacteria bugs etc. They are pretty much everywhere, billions of them living on our skin every day. Let alone our clothes and other possessions.
At my Uni, we did this experiment where we grew bugs from our everyday items like glasses, mobiles etc. My glasses grew over 20 different bugs.
So whenever someone says they grew faecal bugs from certain item it's not really limited to that. It's practically everywhere.