I have a costume party to attend on Saturday, and my costume should be faded & weatherbeaten. Unfortunately, it’s not. It’s bright & shiny & new. One piece is bright red rayon or polyester, and the other is a dark blue cotton / polyester blend.
I tried soaking in vegetable oil and then washing in bleach, but they’re both still bright and sparkly!
I’m thinking about tying the things to my roof-rack & driving them around for a while.
Any suggestions on quickly aging my clothes?
Polyester’s tough - it was invented and marketed to *avoid * aging, but if you’re determined, you can do it.
Throw it on your driveway and run over with with your car - several times, back and forth. The jump out, rearrange the material and repeat.
Throw a couple of handfuls of dry sand on it before driving on it if you want it really beaten up.
Then wash. Most of the dirt should still wash out, but the sand will hopefully have scored the fabric fibers enough to give it a roughed up look.
WhyNot (former costume designer and builder)
Try wearing it until the party on Saturday. You know, just never take it off, eat in it, sleep in it, take a bath in it…I guarantee you that by Saturday it’ll be getting really, really old. 
otherwise I’d throw it in the washer and wash the shit out it and dry it over and over again. Don’t use detergent. Just use warm water and tumble dry several dozen times.
You might try hanging it in the sun until then. If you’ve got a line with a good breeze and bright sunshine.
or you could acid wash it. I can’t remember the product name but people once wore “acid washed” jeans. There was a product to do this at home and it wasn’t bleach.
have fun 
Bright reds and dark blues?
What are you going as a dead Superman?
Try running a lawnmower over it.
Do you know anyone who has a cement mixer? Twenty minutes in there with some wet gravel should make it look pretty worn.
Alternatively, you can make garments look faded by rinsing them in a dilute solution of white or cream coloured emulsion paint - allow to dry crumpled up and repeat.
B]Jim** I’ve been thinking about your question and IIRC (they/we) used to use a product called Oxyclean it’s still available, and wash jeans that were a 50/50 poly/cotton blend. By putting in several times the amount recommended it’d take practiacally all of the dye out of the cotton while only fading the polyester a little bit. But a noticeable BIT. I believe I’d try that…practice test on some similar fabric first to determine the fade factor and when you do the suit maybe add some fabric softener as well. That should fade it out and make it susceptible to wrinkles. Just leave it in the dryer and the heat from the dryer as it cools should wrinkle the costume however it is piled inside.
good luck
I’d bury it and hose down the spot several times a day. The mud should do a good job.
When I had to do this for stage purposes there were several methods I used, but it depended on fiber content and what the article of clothing was. my biggest tools involved those sanding sponges you can get from a hardware store (although sometimes I worked up to a belt sander), various spray paints and spray dyes, and rocks in fabric bags. The rocks could be used to cause sag. you get the fabric wet then safetypin them to an area you want to make misshapen. Pockets in particular are good. Cheese graters and rasps are also good for breaking down fabric. Wash the item a couple times with bleach then start breaking it down.
Let’s see. Wear in clothes = damage to the overall material (roughing, pilling, thining), localized damage (rips, tears in seams), added color (from stains) and loss of color.
So, in pretty much any order:
Do that 'drive over with car several times – best if done on the edge of a road full of sand and grit and such. (Road grease/tar a bonus!)
“Twist” the items into ropes, find a friendly mutt with good teeth, and play tug of war for a few minutes with each.
Soak garments over night in a pretty strong chlorine bleach solution. (Like a couple cups bleach in a 5 gallon bucket.
Last:
If the clothes don’t look worn and old by then…I give up.
Soak them in coffee for a couple of days, then wash them.
Staining them with tea is a good way to age cloth, but I’m not sure about polyester. I’ve used it on white cotton to give it an aged look. Hey, it may be worth trying it. Brew some strong tea, pour in a bucket, and dip the clothing therein. Rinse.
Dying or staining polyester after manufacture is very difficult unless you have access to proffesional stuff. I don’t think tea will do it. Rit dyes definitely will not. Coffee, maybe. The danger with dyeing it is if a cotton thread was used to sew it, it will stain much more quickly and much darker than the poly body. You might end up with dark lines at all the seams. Grease or oil-based things will give you a translucent patch where they touch, which may not wash out. If this is a look you want, be careful where you place it, or you may need to wear pasties.
The cotton/poly blend will be easier. If you want to have even looking wear, do the poly piece first and then work on the cotton/poly. Then you can stop beating it up when it matches the poly.
Oh, duh. If this is for costume use only, you can use spray paint. Hold the can as far away from the garment as you have room for (make sure to cover your surface well, and at least twice as far as you think you’ll need) and spray lightly. If you’re a good 5 or 6 feet back, the spray should be really light. For dirt, use charcol grey. If you just want faded, use off white, lighter reds or blues and a little grey or black. The more colors you use, the more natural it will look, as fabric doesn’t all fade or dirty at the same rate.
I’d tie them to the bumper of my car and take a long drive down a dirt road.
Sandpaper!
Makes sense, seeing is how Oxyclean is a mixture of carbonates and percarbonates. What might work even better would be hydrogen peroxide. You’re looking for anything that’ll disrupt double bond conjugation and do other damage to the dyes. I’m assuming that it’s an organic dye, seeing as how we’re talking clothing here. Another option might be to stick it under a fairly high-power UV source. The energy of the photons will break the double bonds and disrupt conjugation. Maybe you could strike a deal with your local tanning salon?
And, of course, there’s always bleach. Pour enough of that it, and you’ll probably get some fabric degredation as well.
I’ve gotten good results rubbing polyester outfits down with coarse sandpaper and/or putting it in a garment bag with small coarse gravel and running that over. But make sure you give the elbows and knees, cuffs of the sleeves and neck an extra scrubbing because that’s where outfits tend to get the most wear.
If you’re careful, you can also “dust” it with spray paint. Like try to mist it from four feet away (minimum). You’d have to practice that though because it’s easy to goof it up and wreck it and spray cans may vary (some cans you need to be only three feet away, others will have you standing back around six feet.)
On preview I see that WhyNot’s already mentioned this… sigh …Long work day.
I’d actually avoid the regular bleach, as bleach damage doesn’t really look like fading, and will affect the cotton so much more than the polyester.
The dye companies make various “color remover” products. Rit is crappy dye, so I assume their color remover is crappy as well, but since you’re not looking for complete removal, it might do the trick. Rit dye is sold all over the place, like in supermarkets, craft stores, etc. I don’t know how it will affect the differing fibers.
Some great ideas in this thread, by the way. If it were me, I’d probably run over it with a car a bunch of times, then use the sanding blocks on the knees and elbows and the edges of the collar and cuffs, then try to get some stains on it.