Cleaning and caring for your fursuit
To keep you fursuit looking fresh and new it is important to properly care and clean it. Although it will show wear and tear from use over the years, here are some tips to keep it looking the best it can.
Wash your suit after every major outing or convention. This depends upon how active you are in suit, but normally after a convention or a long, sweaty outing on a hot day, it is a good idea to wash your suit. Your fursuit body can be machine washed or hand washed in a bathtub. Use a light detergent and COLD or luke warm water. It is very very important not to use hot water as it will MELT the fur. Double, triple check your washing machine setting to make sure it is cold. After washing you can hang the suit up to dry, put a fan on it to speed up the drying process. We recommend putting your suit through a washing machine cycle even if you choose to hand scrub it in a tub because it will spin out most of the water. This will cut down dry time drastically and hanging your suit up when it is soaking wet can cause the fur to stretch since it is so heavy. If you have attached feet or tail, they are also safe to wash along with the body. Hand paws can be hand or machine washed as well. We recommend putting them in a pillow case that can close or some type of wash bag to protect the fur fibers if you machine wash them. Folex is a great spot cleaner for any stains that may occur.
Washing the head is the only hard part. Heads only need a deep cleaning after many many hours of use. Depending upon use this could be every few years. However, you can wipe down the inside and outside with a wet towel to wipe of excess sweat and dirt. Watered down rubbing alcohol can be used to disinfect any part of your suit, but use caution around the fursuit’s eyes. Talk to us if you are wanting to do a deep clean of your head, and we can give you more advice.
It is also important to brush your suit before and after wearing it. You can use almost any type of brush. A slicker brush is most commonly used. Gently brush with the fur direction to prevent matting of the fibers. Do not be too rough with the brushing as you may pull out too many fibers.
Be aware of your surrounding. Is the person you are hugging clean? do they have body paint or fake blood on themselves? If you have indoor feet paws or a tail that drags on the ground watch out where you are walking. Jumping on a trampoline or climbing on a playground may not be the best thing for your feet. Remember to be cautious and safe!
Traveling with your fursuit
It is not an uncommon thing to travel long distances with your fursuit on a plane and can be quite easy! We recommend getting a large suitcase with a hard outer shell to transport your suit in on a flight. It is not recommended to put your suit in an action packer as they have a lid that does not securely latch onto the bin. There have been cases of the lids coming off during transport and your suit could be lost forever! They just simply are not meant for air travel. A hard suit case will work perfectly fine, and is designed specifically to go one a plane. You can put all of your suit parts, expect for the head, in the suitcase.
If you are unable to fit your suit into the suit case because it is too big, you can vacuum-pack it. Vacuum bags can be purchased at many stores, they suck out all the air in the bag, compressing your suit to a very small size. This is perfectly safe for your suit to be compressed for a few hours during a flight. Just be sure to hang and brush it out as soon as you get to your destination, and it this method is not meant for long term storage. If you are staying at a hotel, you can ask the maids or front desk for a vacuum when you are leaving.
Your fursuit head can be carried onto the plane in your arms as a “personal item”. It can be placed in a bag to protect it from dirt and germs. Usually the heads can fit under the seat in front of you during the flight.