Fading

Fading that fooled everybody

Item:

Wool blend jacket in very pale green

Fault:

Area of colour fading which the owner complained about after drycleaning.

Cause:

The cause of this problem only became apparent after the owner admitted applying milk to the garment to try to remove a red wine stain.

Once this was explained to the cleaner it was found to be possible to take out the milk using a steam gun. This was done very slowly and very skilfully. The result was a perfect unfaded article with no trace of red wine!

Differential fading

Item:

Grain leather jacket which was originally coral pink

Fault:

Following cleaning in perchloroethylene there was extensive localised loss of the colour, particularly over the shoulders and upper arms but with some fading everywhere, even in protected areas.

Cause:

Colourfastness testing of the dyes used indicated that they were not fast to perchloroethylene fluid and came away very easily.

This produced the overall fading. The additional localised damage was a consequence of normal sunlight which weakened the dyes and enabled them to be flushed out very easily.

Responsibility:

The garment maker and ultimately the original leather tanner are responsible for the colourfastness of a jacket such as this to drycleaning.

Rectification: The porous surface to this coat means that any attempt at re-dyeing is going to produce a very patchy result. It was referred back to the garment maker

Sunlight

Item:

Set of loose covers in a floral print

Fault:

Following drycleaning there was extensive colour fading affecting predominantly one side or the exposed edges of the covers.

Cause:

The pattern of fading on these covers indicated that the prime cause was the effect of natural daylight over a long period of time.

This may have produced very little visible problem at the time but the effect of drycleaning is to flush out the weakened dyes to reveal and accentuate the problem so that it becomes much more obvious after cleaning than it was before.

Responsibility:

The fabric maker and printer traditionally take responsibility for colourfastness to natural daylight of the dyes used in a print.

There is nothing the owner or the cleaner could have done to have foreseen or to have avoided this particular example of fading.

Rectification:

There is no sensible means by which sunlight fading can be rectified.

Recognising the causes of fading

Most articles change colour with the effects of exposure to oxygen in the air and natural daylight. Strong sunlight produces even more rapid results especially if it is concentrated by a car window focussing it on a garment lying across the back seat or on the parcel shelf.

Some dyes are much sensitive than others and it is often the case that the better the fastness the more expensive the dyeing process. The best dyers take care with every stage, especially fixation but others do not, which is why drycleaners see such variable results after cleaning.

Not true

Perchloroethylene is a strong solvent and it is certainly not true that because an article cannot be washed then it is going to be safe to put “dryclean only” on it. Despite this a great many garment designers use exactly this illogical reasoning which is why there are so many potential failures on the rails in high street retailers.

The general trend to off-shore sourcing of garments for the UK market has made matters much worse over the last five years. This trend is still continuing and the intense pressure under which high street garment retailers find themselves means that they have little time to spare for the problems being stacked up for the unwary cleaner!

This month’s batch of failures shows various types of fading which are generally difficult both to predict and avoid.