National Clothesline

Many garments in the fashion news today combine the use of cloth fabrics with suede and leather trim or combine contrasting colored suede or leather panels in a single garment.

These high fashion items could at times create problems for drycleaners who accept them for cleaning by a cloth drycleaning or wetcleaning process or by a fat liquor-based leather drycleaning process or by any cleaning process that does not condition the cleaning fluid used to prewash, wash and rinse the leather panels or trims.

If the colors of the trims or panels are light, natural or pale pastel shades, and if the garment is processed by a high-tech leather drycleaning or wetcleaning process that chemically conditions the cleaning fluid to stabilize dye colors, retain softness while cleaning both cloth fabrics and suede and leather skins, there will be no serious problems.

However, if the professional leather cleaning drycleaning process utilizes tannery type fat liquor, which is an animal fat or a vegetable fat extract, as an additive to the drycleaning fluid used to clean the leather trimmed cloth garment, there are likely to be undesirable effects on the cloth portion of the garment.

Since fat liquor is 100 percent fatty acid, the usual problems associated with fatty acids will be seen on the cloth portion of the trimmed garment.

These problems include an oily residue on the trimmed cloth items in addition to the bleeding of the suede or leather trim onto the trimmed cloth items and create streaks and swales on silks and tight knit sheer polyester fabrics.

Under these circumstances, the problem might be corrected by rinsing the garment in an attempt to remove the fatty acid residues and the dye bleed.

However, this approach also has some undesirable side effects such as: the light in colored suede or leather trim may become dried out and stiff; or the dark or bright colored suede or leather trim will lose more color and have more bleeding of color onto the cloth portions as well as drying out and stiffening the suede or leather trim.

The bleeding onto the cloth might be corrected by spotting, rerunning and rinsing until the bleeding stops. However, while the bleeding may be removed from the cloth, the color of the suede or leather trim will also be lost.

This problem could be avoided if the leather was removed and the cloth portion was spotted and rerun until the dye bleed was gone. The leather could then be redyed or repainted to restore its color and could be sewn back in place. This procedure, of course, is not practical or economical.

A similar problem could occur if the garment is made entirely of suede or leather panels of contrasting colors sewn together next to each other. Here the dark colors can bleed onto the light colors during the cleaning process if the cleaning fluid is not chemically conditioned to stabilize the colors and retain the softness of the skins during the leather cleaning process.

“That’s awful,” you may say, and you are right.

What, if anything, can be done to solve this problem of cleaning cloth garments trimmed in suede or leather and cleaning leather garments made up of panels of skins of contrasting colors, some light next to some dark?

Well, the real solution is chemical rather than mechanical.

The idea is to prevent the problem from occurring in the first place rather to correct the mess after the damage is done. You want to be able to do the job trouble-free the first time rather than to make a mess and then try to find ways to correct it.

This can be accomplished by using a leather drycleaning additive like the Royaltone detergent plus conditioner, which contains no fatty acid and can be added to any drycleaning fluid to prevent dye bleed, color loss, streaks, swales and oily films from occurring on the cloth portions of garments trimmed with suede or leather, or by using a leather wetcleaning detergent plus conditioner like Prosuede Wet, which can be added to condition the water.

Both will prevent color loss and bleeding from dark to light colors on garments made of panels of contrasting colors of suede or leather sewn together next to each other and prevent color loss and bleeding from suede or leather trim onto the cloth garment to which it is attached.

Another related problem has to do with a popular fashion trend of trimming multiple piece cloth garments with suede or leather. The outfit may consist of two or three pieces with only one of the pieces trimmed in leather or suede.

Typically, the customer will bring only the suede or leather trimmed piece for leather cleaning.

Even in regular drycleaning or wetcleaning, it is not good practice to run only one piece of a multi-piece outfit because of the possibility of a slight change in color due to the slight variations in drycleaning fluid or wetcleaning water conditions that occur from one load to another.

If you used a modern process of leather drycleaning, like the Royaltone leather drycleaning process, which is free of fatty acid fat liquors, or the Royaltone leather wetcleaning process, then the result of not cleaning all of the pieces of the multi-piece outfit at the same time will be no worse than it is in regular drycleaning or wetcleaning.

However, if you use the old tannery type fat liquor high fatty acid animal or vegetable fat system, the result of not drycleaning all of the pieces of the multiple-piece outfit at the same time will be very noticeable when the pieces are compared.

In fact, the change in color of the cloth portions of the outfit will be noticeable even if all pieces are cleaned together in a fat liquor leather drycleaning system.

The reason for this is that the old animal fat oil system utilizes fatty acid oils and soaps in the drycleaning fluid. This high level of fatty acid, combined with the dye loss from the leather in the wheel, which is common in this type of system, creates a different color in the cloth parts of the outfit due to redeposition of these fatty acids and the dye bleed non-volatile residues.

The lighter the color of the cloth and the darker the color of the suede or leather trim, the more marked the change in color of the cloth portion of the multi-piece outfit drycleaned in a fatty acid system.

The bottom line is that all pieces of a multi-piece suede or leather outfit must be cleaned at the same time if they are to match in color after being leather cleaned; and all pieces of a multi-piece suede or leather trimmed cloth outfit should be cleaned in a modern high-tech leather cleaning system that does not utilize fat liquor fatty acid animal or vegetable fat oils and that chemically conditions the drycleaning fluid to prevent stiffening of the skins and inhibit color loss and bleeding of the leather dye from the trim on to the cloth.

Similar color loss and bleeding problems can occur in wetcleaning, if the cloth garments trimmed with suede or leather or multi-color suedes or leathers are wetcleaned using regular cloth wetcleaning spotters, detergents and procedures.

A trouble-free leather wetcleaning process should protect the softness of the leather and stabilize the dyes during a dye setting prewash cycle. It should then retain the softness of the leather and hold the dyes in the leather during the main wetcleaning wash cycle.

Finally, it should condition the leather to protect its softness while retaining the dye color in the leather during a final conditioning rinse cycle. The item should then be dried in a controlled drying process to prevent stiffening of the leather during the drying cycle.

This can all easily be accomplished by using a modern high tech wetcleaning process and products that are compatible with both cloth and leather and utilize special color safe leather spotting agents, a dye fixing prewash additive, a main wash conditioning detergent, a softening conditioning rinse additive and a controlled drying process to prevent stiffening and shriveling of the skins.