I Nearly Ruined A Swimsuit In The Wash And Learned Something About Shrinking

So okay, backstory. I threw my swimsuit in with a regular load of laundry, on hot, with the jeans, like a person who has apparently never read a single care tag in her entire life, and pulled it out forty minutes later looking like it belonged to a Barbie. Not exaggerating, the bottoms had gone from “fits like they were made for me” to “fits like a hair tie.” I stood in my bathroom holding this thing up going, did I do this, or was this always going to happen, or is this a scam.

Sent a photo to the group chat immediately, one person replied “RIP,” one person replied nothing but sent back a single laughing emoji, which honestly felt like the correct response to a grown woman ruining a $68 swimsuit over a laundry setting she didn’t bother to check. And that’s the thing that actually stuck with me after the panic wore off, because I went into this thinking swimsuits shrinking was one of those internet myths, like the one about toothpaste removing scratches, and came out the other side realizing it’s not a myth at all, it’s just nobody explains WHY, so everyone treats it like folklore instead of chemistry.

What’s Actually Happening To The Fabric

Here’s what I didn’t know going in. Swimsuit fabric is basically always some blend of nylon or polyester with spandex mixed in, spandex being the stretchy part that makes it snap back to your body instead of sitting there like a paper bag.

Spandex hates heat. Like, genuinely can’t handle it. Heat breaks down the elastic fibers at a molecular level, which sounds dramatic but is just true, and once those fibers are compromised they don’t stretch back out the way they used to. So the fabric contracts and just sort of stays that way. It’s not that the whole suit got smaller, it’s that the part of it responsible for stretching got damaged and gave up.

Which explains why my bottoms shrank more than the top did, because the bottoms had a higher percentage of spandex to begin with, more stretch built in, more of it to lose. I actually went and checked the tags after the fact, which is very much closing the barn door after the horse has left, but the bottoms were something like 82 percent nylon and 18 percent spandex, and the top was closer to 90 and 10. More stretch, more risk. I did not know that going in and I feel like nobody tells you that going in.

And it’s not JUST the heat either, though that’s the big one. The dryer is basically a second crime scene. Even a suit that survives a cool wash can come out of a hot dryer looking like it went through a trash compactor, because dryer heat is way more concentrated and sustained than washer heat, it’s just cooking the elastic for however long your cycle runs. I used to think air drying was a suggestion for people with more patience than me. Turns out it’s closer to a requirement if you want the thing to still fit next summer.

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The other piece I didn’t clock until I started actually paying attention, chlorine and salt water do a version of this too, slower, but it’s compounding. So if you’re washing a suit that’s already been beaten up by a pool all week, on hot, then tossing it in the dryer, you’re basically stacking three separate damage events on top of each other and then acting surprised when it comes out looking like doll clothes. It’s not one dramatic mistake usually. It’s a pile of small ones.

What I Actually Do Now, And Where I Still Slip Up

So here’s where I landed, and I want to be honest that it took me actually ruining a suit to care enough to change anything, because before that I was very much a “throw it in with everything else” person. Cold water, always, hand wash if I’m being a good person that week, machine on delicates in a mesh bag if I’m being a normal person with a life.

No dryer, ever, full stop, that’s the one rule I don’t break anymore. I lay it flat on a towel and let it air dry, which takes longer than I’d like, but it’s a lot faster than rebuying a swimsuit you actually liked.

I will say, I’m not perfect about this. Update, I was doing so well for a while and then last month I got lazy on vacation and hand washed a suit in the sink with hotel soap because I didn’t want to deal with it, and I genuinely don’t know if that counts as damage or if I got lucky, it still fits, jury’s out, ask me again in August.

But the bigger opinion I’ve landed on, and I say this as someone who films outfit content for a living and cares a normal amount about clothes fitting right on camera, is that swimsuit shrinking isn’t really a mystery or bad luck, it’s mostly just heat exposure that nobody warns you about clearly enough. The tag says cold wash, lay flat to dry, and I used to read that as the fine print nobody actually follows, like the terms and conditions of laundry. Turns out it’s the whole instruction manual, not a suggestion. Learn from my $68 mistake so you don’t have to make your own.