How to revive faded T-shirts – and other easy ways to keep clothes looking new

I’ve long been a fan of keeping clothes in use for as long as possible. As a child, a family friend’s very stylish daughter would bi-annually donate hand-me-downs, I wore almost exclusively thrifted outfits as a student, and now, some of my favourite items in my wardrobe were either bought second-hand or have been “borrowed” from my mum’s collection from the 1970s.

Oxfam’s Second Hand September initiative, currently in full swing, annually highlights how beneficial it is not to buy new, and, thanks to other factors, from eBay partnering with Love Island in 2022 and handy apps like Vinted, to the cost of living crisis and climate change, the second-hand clothing market is booming, predicted to rise by 85.5% between 2022 and 2026.

In addition, we’re all being encouraged to wear our clothes – second-hand or not – a minimum of thirty times for the sake of the environment. In the UK, on average, we throw away a whopping 72 items of clothing every year  (the majority of which ends up in landfill or burnt), but according to a study by WRAP, extending the lifetime of clothes by just nine months of active use would reduce carbon, water and waste footprints by 20-30%.

Even one of the only items I bought new at university nearly thirty years ago – a striped skirt from Topshop – is still going strong. And although I am someone who looks after and treasures my clothes, items that have been around for a while might inevitably need a little bit of extra care and attention. So how do you keep those older clothes looking better for longer? And can you revive faded vintage pieces to look as good as new?

Patch up ripped jeans using sashiko

Sashiko is a method of Japanese embroidery dating back to at least the Edo period (1603-1867), a technique used not only to embellish garments but also to reinforce and mend them. At a time when cloth was a precious commodity because fibres like cotton and hemp were painstakingly handspun, handwoven and dyed at home, it made sense to mend what was already in existence.

Emma Shaw is the founder of The Well Worn, a British brand with the tagline “remade in the UK”. She explains that it started life as a handful of sashiko pieces. “On a work trip to Tokyo a few years ago, I came across some amazing mending and stitching techniques. After some research and lots of practice I started mending some vintage indigo cloth which became my first products for The Well Worn four years ago.”

I’ve had these “distressed ready” jeans for a decade, and the subtle rips that were originally in the knees had grown beyond recognition to the point that when sitting down, I looked like I was wearing shorts. I haven’t worn them for years as a result, but I saved them because I had always liked the fit, and I had intended to fix them at one of The Well Worn’s sashiko workshops. Sadly I couldn’t attend, so I decided to try it at home.

You will need

• Material scraps for the patches

• A vanishing fabric pen.

• Needle and thread – you can buy sashiko-specific needles and threads, but in the name of sustainability, I used what I already had.

You could use a contrasting fabric for the patches rather than denim like I have, and you can sew them over the hole for a cleaner look. I wanted to achieve a truly visible mending finish, so I tacked mine to the inside of the jeans, leaving the frayed edges visible on the outside (Shaw suggests a cheat trick of using Pritt Stick to keep the patch in place). Next, I took my vanishing fabric pen and measured out a box of lines to make sure that I was sewing straight and evenly (NB, the pen marks disappear very quickly, so I switched to drawing one line at a time, stitching right away before the line was gone).

I doubled the thread for a more visible stitch and started rather too ambitiously by trying a star design. It soon became clear that this was beyond my skillset, so instead I took Shaw’s advice for beginners. “Simple lines of running stitch to form a grid looks really effective,” she continues. “I love using ecru thread so that the stitch really stands out but if you’re a little nervous, use more tonal coloured threads.” I decided to use lots of different colours for a statement look. The whole process, once I got into the swing of it, took me about four hours.

The Results

I am thrilled. Will definitely do it again on some second-hand jeans.

Revive faded, bobbled clothes with Dylon detergent

I bought this 1990s Elastica tee in my local vintage store. The dark blue had clearly faded and was looking a little past its best, but I still loved it. I hadn’t given much thought to why our clothing fades over time until I got chatting with Niki Vadera, the marketing and digital director at Henkel, the company behind Dylon, which has just launched a new washing detergent with claims that it will have your old clothes looking like new after just ten washes.

“It removes biofilm, which builds up in your clothes when you wash them,” says Vadera when explaining how the patent pending Triple Renew formula works. “This helps with the restoration of the fibres, smoothing them out.” When I took a closer look at my t-shirt, I could clearly see the whitish bobbles on the fibres, obscuring the original darker blue cotton underneath. It is this that gives the impression that the clothing has faded when in fact, the fibres have become roughed up through washing, which has affected the colour of the tee. “There’s no dye or anything in this product,” continues Vadera. “The colour revival comes from the removal of the pilling and the fuzz.”

I was lucky enough to get my hands on a bottle of Dylon Detergent ahead of the launch and have spent the last month using it not only to test its revival claims on my t-shirt, but on all of my laundry, because it should also protect my newer clothes from ever fading and bobbling.

I’ve been an advocate of washing my clothes less frequently for years for the sake of their longevity and this mindset is one that Dylon is hoping to pass to its customers with this new gentle detergent. “60% of garments only need a gentle wash if they don’t have any stains on them, or you’ve only worn them for a few hours,” says Vadera. She goes on to explain that the enzymes in many detergents, particularly those with a focus on stain removal, cause chemical wear and tear to clothing, shortening its lifespan. As well as encouraging us to keep hold of our own clothes for longer, Dylon has its eyes on the second hand market. “You might have been put off getting something from a vintage shop thinking it looks like it needs a bit of love, and actually you can give it that TLC yourself at home.”

The Results

I noticed a difference after one wash; after ten the bobbles weren’t gone completely but there’s a marked improvement in the colour. I love the smell of this product and will continue to use it.

Dylon Detergent, £7, available in four options - Colour, Blossom, Dark and Sport - from September 18 in Tesco, and launching in other major retailers soon

Fix stained collars with vinegar and bicarb

I am a big fan of a Breton stripe, but since most of them are white at collar level, they can be as high maintenance to keep clean as a plain white t-shirt. I’d noticed that many of my Bretons were falling victim to grubby collars that didn’t get clean in a regular wash, thanks to the yellowing effect of sunscreen and, I suspect, a touch of foundation added into the stain mix.

We’ve established that I don’t use harsh detergents in my machine, so I went old school for this one, with the help of some tips from social media accounts dedicated to the subject of stain removal and some traditional products from my local hardware store.

You will need

• Distilled white vinegar

• Bicarbonate of soda

I started by soaking the Bretons (collars only) in a solution of two cups of cold water to one cup of vinegar. I left this for an hour, which, after a scrub with some washing up liquid, was supposed to suffice for sunscreen stains. However, there was still quite a stain on the collar, so I added a toothpaste-consistency mixture of bicarbonate of soda and water to the stain (a method I’d read works for unsightly armpit stains) and left that to do its thing for a further hour and a half. I then popped the bicarb-covered collars back in the vinegar solution so it fizzed up for a few minutes, and finished by washing the Bretons in a regular load of washing.

The Result

Not perfect, but very much improved to the point where I don’t think anyone would notice.