MONTHLY GARMENT ISSUES                  

Dye Migration During Dry Cleaning

The Problem: Colored yarns, trims, panels or printed designs bleed during dry-cleaning, causing dye transfer and staining of the lighter areas of the same garment. 

What does it look like? In most cases, only local areas of the lighter color fabric will show transfer of the fugitive dye. This can be seen in random splotches or streaks or only along the nearby edges where the colour panels or yarn meet. in other cases, the dye bleeding may have discolored the entire lighter areas of the garment.

What Causes it? The dye or pigment used to create the darker coloured fabric, yarn or design print was soluble in dry-cleaning solvent. Therefore, during this professional dry-cleaning this solvent soluble dye bleeds out and stains lighter areas of the garment.

Can It be Prevented? There is no way the drycleaner can prevent solvent soluble dyes from bleeding during dry-cleaning. Also, since most colors on dry cleanable items are colorfast to dry-cleaning, the cleaner would have no cause to suspect that any particular fashion would have a problem with colorfastness. 

Who Is Responsible? When fabrics are properly dyed there will be no fading and dye migration during cleaning. The textile manufacturer who applied the original fabric color or design is responsible for its colorfastness, therefore, the manufacturer must be held responsible when such dyes fail in cleaning.

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