Vintage Garment Care Calculator

Vintage and antique textiles degrade through fiber-specific chemistry — cellulose breakdown in cotton and linen, protein hydrolysis in silk and wool — so this calculator starts from a per-fiber degradation rate multiplied by the garment's age to get a fiber-fragility figure, then adds in a condition penalty (assessed on a 1-5 scale, with poor condition weighted three times as heavily as the raw fragility contribution), a flat penalty for embellishments like beading or metallic thread, and a fragility penalty that only kicks in at humidity extremes — above 65% or below 30% relative humidity — rather than the tighter 45-55% band conservators consider ideal for long-term storage (that tighter band instead drives the separate storage-quality score, which scores humidity on how far it sits from the 50% midpoint). Those combine into an overall fragility score (0-10) that directly drives the cleaning-method recommendation, stepping from standard washing at the low end through gentle hand washing, spot-cleaning only, professional conservator treatment, and finally "do not clean" for the most fragile pieces — each tier also caps the maximum safe water temperature, dropping to zero (no water contact at all) once a garment crosses into conservator-only territory.

Separately, the calculator estimates a professional conservation cost (scaled by fragility, with surcharges for embellishments and for garments over 50 or 100 years old), a rough count of acid-free tissue sheets needed for archival storage, and an insurance-priority score that weights age, condition, embellishments, and fragility together to flag pieces worth appraising. The remaining-display-life estimate is driven mainly by current condition and how far your storage humidity deviates from ideal — it is not a laboratory assessment, and any garment showing active deterioration, pest damage, or structural failure should go to an actual textile conservator regardless of what this score suggests.