Consuming Interest
Clean as Clean
By LESLIE ADRIAN A FRIEND of mine some time ago bought a pink coat. Not a hunting coat, but a shapely and rather expensive coat that was lined with Vilene, a substance which can, its makers say, be perfectly satisfactorily dry- cleaned. My friend's cleaner, however—a branch of a well-known London firm—returned the coat a 'porridgy mass. She sent it back. The cleaners pressed it rather better than they had bothered to do the first time, and, after a protest, said that they could not see that the coat had changed in any way. All that had been lost was the fashionable shape of the coat, which a simple cleaner could perhaps hardly be ex- pected to appreciate; so, to back up her claim that the thing was ruined, my friend took her coat back to the shop where she bought it. They agreed that it was spoiled—verbally--but refused actually to give her a letter to that effect lest, presumably, the claim should somehow reboun on them. At that point my friend gave up di game, gave the now shapeless coat to a pregna friend, and vowed never to go near that cleaner again. The girl in the branch was very dl appointed. 'You're giving up?' she said. ens' what they count on your doing!'
There can hardly be a family in the count that has not a similar tale to tell. Something hit half a million garments a day go to the dry cleaners: in spite of the washable fabrics no abounding, that is nearly twice as many as in p war days. Or, in other words, the cleaning firm have never had it so good; but there are plent of people who think they have never done it 8 bad. The chief reason for this, everyone agree is that it is no longer possible to tell at a gia° what a garment is made of, and even if the fah!' is correctly identified, the synthetics used in t buttons, the adhesives, the buckles and the bet may have hidden snags fatal to successf cleaning.
The use by most (though not all) cleaners a perchlorethylene enables nearly all the man-mad fibres to be cleaned safely if the cleaners kW) what they are handling. Tricel, for instan which would be ruined if treated with trichlor, ethylene (widely used until recently), is quite saftl,els in the new fluid. Courtaulds, the manufactured 4,` of Tricel, make it a condition of sale that a garments containing Tricel should bear a secv°4 label announcing the fact. They make a simil condition for Courtelle, which like the oth acrylic fibres, Acrilan and Orlon, or garmen made of these fabrics, could lose its shape !et the tumbler dryers if the heat is more than 14(r or it is tumbled for too long. The makers Acrilan advise hand washing for all their lout; wear, and Courtelle, too, prefers washing to al” form of dry-cleaning. It is unwise to send anything made of DYitet to an ordinary cleaner. Cleaning disasters with Dynel fur fabric, which have turned a soft iiP lustrous coat into a shrunken, matted mess. hay prompted the makers of Dynel to sponsor special Dynel cleaning service which started last month. A few cleaners exhibit a coral card stating in yellow print that they are members of this service, but if you cannot find one. write t°1 Union Carbide at 103 Mount Street, WI. Mlle coats are labelled, but an unmarked trap for the unwary is a conventional cloth coat trimmed With Dynel fur. This would be virtually uncleanabla'
a' the process necessary to clean the coat would ruin the Dynel trimming.
Clothing manufacturers could help a great deal more to cut out the damage inflicted by cleaning themicals. Accurate labelling of garments made ith soluble buttons, adhesive flock printing or nfast dyes would save the cleaner work and the ustomer anxiety, but it might' not encourage ales. But the axiom remains: Accurate labelling t the key it) safe cleaning' Rut, fundamentally, the question of how the caning is done is the headache of the cleaner; 'hal worries the customer is that if the cleaner akes a mess of it, he cannot claim from either e manufacturer or the cleaner. It is, I hope, a: ist a straw in the wind that one women's ess tirm—Polly Peck—will recommend a caner for their clothes who is, presumably, ersed in the techniques that may best be applied them; more of such links might raise the eneral standard, though obviously we could ever dispense with the general 'cleaning firm Nether.
There are cleaners who giVe generous corn- en'sation and accept a large measure of responsi- litY, but they still print a set of totally unfair con- 'lions on the ticket. A few, like Clarks of Ret- ord tHallcroft, Retford, Notts), are exemplary fa taking full responsibility for every garment `.1eY clean, except when they feel, after inspection, Nit cleaning would be harmful. Their procedure .sueh a case is to recommend 'against dry- edning, but under pressure they accept it ithout guarantee.' There 'lire other enlightened
Retexturing after cleaning is not always needed. Wool garments lose some of their oily 'dressing' during wear, and absorb in its place greasy deposits and dirt. On the average about 2 oz. of such matter is removed during cleaning, which explains why cleaned clothes feel lighter. Woollen garments. knitwear for example, suffer little or no deterioration as a consequence, but worsted and other smooth finished cloths really do need retexturing (which, crudely expressed, means putting back some of the lost lanolin).
firms which also accept garments unconditionally (with the reservation that there are materials which cannot stand it). These include Zernys of Hull,-Sketchley, and Advance Laundries.
' The National Federation of Dyers and Cleaners run a research organisation which, they say. works closely with the fabric manufacturers and keeps them posted with up-to-the-minute in- formatiOn. For this reason they hopefully recom- mend that, when in doubt, the owner of doubt- fully dirty clothes should go to one of their members. And I suppose it might be a good idea. However, their recommended conditions of acceptance are still weighted heavily in the cleaners' favour; and they do nothing to insist that their manufacturers use the techniques they advise. Until they do, dry-cleaning (even that phrase is deceptive, when you come to think of it) remains a toss-up. Nothing, I think, but the placing of the customer in a really strong legal position will force the cleaners to take every precaution that science can devise.
Previous page
