RENOVATING HANDBAGS.

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17994, 12 April 1930, Page 15 (Supplement)

RENOVATING HANDBAGS.

Good handbags are so expensive ihat they ought to give a great deal of service. If yours looks worn or soiled, you can probably freshen it up almost like new with one or two simple renovations. Even if the bag is beyond your care, there are still professional cleaners and repairers to call upon. But first try home remedies. Bags of smooth leather or of reptile skin or pigskin (or men’s pigskin wallets) may have a similar treatment to shoes - 0 f the same material; that is, smear them with a touch of white shoe cream applied on a perfectly clean flannel. Then polish with the palm of your hand, which is as excellent for this type of bag as it is for the finger nails. Notice how hand poiishing seems to have banished those odd scratches. Suede and fancy leathers soil very quickly. They can be cleaned and freshened if they are rubbed lightly, either with a clean chamois or with an ink eraser. Benzine is useful for bad stains and an application of line sand-paper will bring up rubbed pile or suede. Bengine is a splendid bag renovator, as it can be used also to clean the white kid inner purse linings which roost handbags have nowadays. These soil so quickly, but the benzine works wonders. Bemember that it is highly inflammable and must be used right away from a Are or naked light. The pretty, new bags of a beige material with decorations in simulated hand-weaving also respond to benzine when soiled; or a dry-cleaner will restore them to a new condition for two or three shillings, leather-covered frame and all. Stray stains on an otherwise good bag generally yield to benzine, but if a single stain obstinately refuses to imdge buy a pretty initial to cover it.