The Wash Leather Jacket in Washing Machine Question That Split My Group Chat Right Down the Middle

Priya sent the photo at 11.47pm on Tuesday. A leather jacket, mid spin cycle, visible through the little round window on her washing machine like some kind of aquarium exhibit nobody asked for. The caption was just “well it’s done now.” Twelve minutes later the group chat had divided into two distinct camps so violently that Fenella, who hadn’t spoken in three weeks after unleashing the whole Ibiza villa deposit debacle on us all, had resurfaced exclusively to type “ABSOLUTELY NOT” in ALL CAPS before blocking herself out again like she’d said everything she wanted to and didn’t have anywhere else to be.

The other side, inexplicably led by a man called Desmond who dates my cousin and has strong feelings about approximately everything from tyre pressure to sourdough starters had decided it would be fine. “Leather’s more durable than you think,” he’d written, as though he hadn’t been sat on his living room couch all these years but had instead spent them personally tanning animal hides in his spare time. Priya, for her own part, had clearly not even bothered asking for our opinions until after she’d pressed start. Sink or swim, she wanted us to give her validation.

She didn’t get it.

The problem is, I kind of did.
I want to be upfront about this: I washed a leather jacket. Not a good jacket, thank god. But a leather jacket. One I bought off a market stall in 2016 for nineteen pounds that, between us, we all suspected wasn’t actually leather to begin with but some leather-adjacent facsimile designed to trick people. Still, I put it through the wash on a delicates cycle, thirty degrees, no spin, feeling very clever about having compromised enough to make it “safe.”

It emerged crumpled and ruined, looking like a crisp packet that had been sat on. Dry, stiff in places it had not previously been stiff. Weirdly soft and puckered in others. Smelling like wet dog had managed to breed with the inside of a new car and produce a foul offspring. Said jacket now resides in the depths of a charity shop that will probably soon house this very article, unless someone’s binned it and in that case I apologise to whoever that charity shop is directly and sincerely.

I know people ask if you can wash leather jacket in washing machine. A lot. More than you would think, considering how pricey leather jackets generally are and how straightforward the answer should be. But really, when they ask me that question what they’re asking is closer to “can I get away with spoiling something by doing it very fast” or “is there a way to cheat my leather jacket out of needing to be cleaned that doesn’t involve me doing anything extra?” And the answer to both of those, experiencial knowledge of my nineteen pound crisp packet jacket coming from me here, is no. No, you can’t. Not if you care about it.
Why leather + washing machine = never

Look. I’m not here to get science-y on you. You don’t need me to describe the physics of why agitating leather damages it when cotton doesn’t because that’s not the part that’s tricky. It’s why water and heat affect leather in ways they don’t affect your usual gym kit. Skin. Leather is skin. At some point that cow/buffalo/alpaca/dog was using that hide to keep itself warm and dry and it did that with the help of natural oils that keep everything supple. Your washing machine, even on that mythical wool program nobody’s talked about since 2003, is trying to strip things clean. That’s detergent’s job. It lifts oil and grease out of clothes so they come out clean. On a cotton t-shirt? Excellent. On leather? You’re literally washing out the one thing that keeps it from turning into cardboard.
Heat + water’s even worse. Especially when you factor in the mild heat of a thirty degree wash with the friction caused by your clothes rubbing against each other and the walls of the drum. Throw that lot at leather and you’ve got what leather people call “case hardening.” Fun fact, which you really don’t want to experience firsthand. It basically just means that the surface dries faster than the rest of your garment, making it stiff in some places and weirdly puckered in others as the rest of it dried at a different speed. Crisp packet. My jacket’s entire demeanor since 2016. No amount of leather conditioner and stern talking to is going to reverse it once the fibre structure’s damaged like that. It’s done.
Oh, and then there’s the fact that most leather jackets these days are finished with either a dye or a coating on the surface. Kind of like painting it on rather than allowing it to soak all the way through. Said dye/coating/special finishing process can crack if you machine wash it, or flake away entirely leaving patches that look considerably lighter than the rest of your jacket. Said jacket of Tomasz’s, the friend who works in the dry cleaners, had turned into “basically a map of somewhere nobody’s ever been,” his words not mine. Patchwork in an unintentional way. He couldn’t fix it. All he could do was advise her to wear it as a “distressed” look and pretend she’d done it on purpose, which she eventually did for approximately a year before confessing to a group of strangers at dinner who promptly told everyone else.

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I’m not saying leather jackets fall apart the second they get anywhere near water. Suede’s a whole different conversation for starters, but butcher suede coats like the one I bought specifically to experiment with in this exact scenario are apparently more resilient because there’s less “finished” surface. Heavily-treated leather that’s been properly finished can probably survive a damp wipe down or one of those sponge leather cleaners without too much trouble either. But putting it in a washing machine, with its prolonged submersion in water and detergent and mechanical agitation and then—because everyone leaves the spin on—having the life basically wrung out of it like some sort of biblical punishment? No. That’s different. That’s not “might be ruined” territory. That’s “will probably be ruined and might completely fall apart” territory and worst of all you don’t know which until it’s too late to change your mind.

Everyone wants you to do it wrong
Look at us. Got all scientific on you then ended on a pun. Me too. Anyway. Here’s the thing about the group text. Beyond Fenella turning up to yell about polyester fibres at unsuspecting guests and Desmond becoming increasingly cartoons-in-his-head about how his opinion had been “right all along and now science agrees with me” (no it doesn’t). Priya knew. When I asked her, after showing me the sad, dry husk of what was once a leather jacket last week as a “don’t do this yourself” warning, she admitted she’d looked online first. Found articles saying it was a bad idea then done it anyway because “dryads dry cleaned stuff, it can’t be that bad” was, at the time, enough of a reason for her to risk it.

Which, I think, is the heart of why this question is asked more than it reasonably should be. We all know not to wash leather jackets. We Google twice and learn it every single time before eventually convincing ourselves that just this once, will be different! No one ever clicks that search link wondering whether or not they should do it right. They want to know how to cheat. Make their jacket appear newly cleaned with minimal effort or learn how many lengths of the laundry basket they have to fold it up and down to count as “handwashing.” I’m as guilty as anyone else. Three suede boots I owned because practicality overruled common sense, a cashmere jumper that went from my wardrobe to pilly little kitten afterwards purely because “everyone else does it and it’ll be fine” stopped me drying one layer of jeans properly for months. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t fine.
Tomaz recommended selling them online and claiming you got them that way on purpose. But who’s going to buy dryad dry cleaned boots off Gumtree?

The Wash Leather Jacket in Washing Machine Question That Split My Group Chat Right Down the Middle

The proper answer, the one nobody wants to hear
The proper answer to this question is “leather jackets shouldn’t go in the washing machine, you boob.” But also, if you actually paid real money for a leather jacket then yeah, actual leather, actual jacket bought with actual currency you were previously willing to spend on clothing; get it professionally cleaned. It’ll make your jacket last longer, and if you’re that worried about water getting into the pockets just leave ‘em empty. For anything else: hire pros.

God knows it sucks. God also knows I’ve rolled my eyes so hard at dry cleaners in the past I probably dislocated something. They always seem so expensive! So…. bitchy? But here’s the thing. They will clean your jacket. Properly. They’ll make it look new again. And if you take it to one that specializes in leather? They’ll do it better than the one down the road whose “specializes in everything” but doesn’t actually pay its specialists enough to properly service your garment. It’ll be cheaper than the jacket was to begin with, chances are. Definitely cheaper than having to buy a new one because you tried to wash it and ended up with something that can legitimately compete with an @AnywherePictures account for abstract vibes.
I wish I had a hack for you. A shortcut. A genius washing machine setting that’ll allow you to wash your leather jacket with zero consequences. I don’t. Nobody does. Not Tomasz. Not any of the leather care companies I eventually yelled at when this happened two years ago and received, politely, a massive flurry of NO ESSES IN RESPONSE. If it’s meant to be washed that scientifically fun polymer wizards call “synthetic,” it’ll have a label saying so. Have you ever seen a leather jacket that does that? Me neither. They’re not compatible. Never have been.

Priya’s jacket, I should probably clarify, has since been exiled to live its days as what she calls her “garden jacket.” Something to wear whenever she takes her bins out or has to deal with recycling collections on rainy mornings.

Which isn’t great, but at least it gets some use. Fenella, on the other hand, has made it her life’s mission to mock Priya over this every chance she gets. Will drop a laughing emoji into the conversation about once a month, just because. No context. Everyone knows what she means, though. And Desmond still hasn’t publicly accepted defeat. Don’t worry. I doubt he ever will.