How to Clean a Lambskin Chanel Bag at Home

This is my unofficial guide on how to clean a lambskin Chanel bag at home. This simple trick works for any kind of lambskin handbag in my experience.

About a year ago, my boyfriend gifted me a used Chanel East West Valentine Flap bag in pink from Fashionphile. Full disclosure: I’m 99 percent sure that Fashionphile edited the photo to make it look less worn and dirty than the bag actual was. Regardless, I was obsessed, it was my first Chanel, and I decided to keep it.

As you can see from the first photo, the back had gotten quite dirty. The top of the flat pocket was basically black. I’d taken it to various leather specialists in New York City (Leather Spa et al) who said they couldn’t clean it, they would have to redye it and couldn’t promise that it would match the original color. They also wanted to charge a lot. Being that it’s a used bag not purchased directly from Chanel, I didn’t have the option to have them refinish it.

In researching, I came across some information that said face cleansing wipes work as at at-home method to clean leather bags–particularly lambskin. And they do!

I used Simple’s Cleansing Facial Wipes. I simply wiped down the bag, being careful to not apply too much pressure. I was a little scared a first, because the leather quickly darkened and took a while to dry. It literally looked worse at first… but then it dried.

You can see from the photos, it truly worked wonders. The black marks are gone. Just note that the color looks slighty different overall in both images, because I photographed the bags at during times and different locations during the day. But the wipes did not remove any color–only the dirt.

This cleaning method cost me less than $10. I tried the wipes on my other bags and the results are equally amazing. I hope this bag cleaning hack helps others–it saved me a lot of time, money and stress!