How can I get wrinkles out of a dress I can't Iron or wash?

Question

I recently bought a pretty, secondhand prom dress from a thrift shop. Unfortunately, it is covered in little wrinkles!

It is made out of a silky, polyester fabric, and has little dots of glitter. It has some bigger, on purpose folds, and I don't want those flattened out.

The washing instructions are:

• Spot clean only by a professional dry cleaner
• Do not clean entire garment
• Do not apply heat to garment

This is not the same as How to remove creases from my shirts without ironing?, as my garment cannot be soaked and then chucked in a tumble dryer. Only parts of the dress can be cleaned as mentioned above and there cannot be any heat applied to it - either through an iron or through a tumble dryer.

Answer 1

Steaming wrinkles out works rather well. I would recommend trying to steam it as lightly as possible to ensure you don't damage the dress. Additionally, small hand-held steamers would allow you the opportunity to steam out wrinkles where you want to without affecting the entire dress (to include those intentional folds you mentioned).

Answer 2

Take it with you the next time you take a [hot] shower. Hang it up somewhere, preferably high. As long as it doesn't bother you, don't turn on the fan to let the steam build up. I do this all the time, as I am too lazy to iron things, and it doesn't work well on large wrinkles, just small ones. This should let the on purpose wrinkles stay and the little ones go away.