Ever feel as though your business attire is slightly too stinky or wrinkly to re-wear -- even if a trip to the dry cleaner isn’t quite yet necessary? Procter & Gamble is bringing to market a brand new device, the curiously-named Swash, to suit this very need.
Priced at $500, P&G likens the machine to a “microwave” for clothes, reports The Wall Street Journal, in the sense that it seeks not to “replace laundering or dry cleaning…just delay them.”
The machine sprays fluids from gel-filled Tide pods -- priced at $6.99 for a pack of 12 -- onto garments to remove wrinkles and odors and restore fit. The Swash then dries each item -- at four feet tall, it is large enough to fit one extra-large men’s suit jacket -- in 15 minutes or less using thermal heating technology.
“Say goodbye to excessive washing, drying, steaming, ironing and dry-cleaning,” the company writes on its website, “and say hello to living life unhampered.”
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With Swash, P&G says it is targeting a brand new demographic, which it has termed “re-wearers.”
“Two decades ago,” P&G's research director, Mike Grieff, told the Journal, “the idea of wearing clothes several times before washing them had a negative stigma.” Now, especially among business people with capsule wardrobes of high-quality items, the pragmatics of re-wearing have become more socially acceptable.
It remains to be seen, however, whether the Swash will forge a brand new phase in users’ clothes-caring routines -- especially at such a steep cost and considering its rather limited claims.
Created in collaboration with Whirlpool, the Swash is currently available at Bloomingdale’s and will roll out to other retailers next month, P&G said.
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