Sour Drapes

You've showered, brushed your teeth, put on your makeup, and are completely dressed. Now for the final touch - one last big spritz of hair spray before you walk out the door. While this may help to keep your hair in place during the big stockholders meeting, it might also cause irreparable damage to your clothing.

Many hair sprays, mousses, and gels contain a high percentage of alcohol and can cause color loss in certain fabrics, especially silks and acetates. As the alcohol contacts the fabric, the dyes are actually dissolved and pushed out into a ring, where they dry. The resulting ring is permanent.

You may not notice this problem right away, but once general surface soil is removed in cleaning, the color loss becomes quite apparent.

Some hair sprays contain not only alcohol but also lacquers. This can cause dark stains to show up around the collar, neck area, and shoulders. Although these stains can be difficult to remove, it is not usually impossible, and your IFI member professional drycleaner should be able to remove the stains.

Try to spritz before putting on your clothes or at least place a towel over your clothing. These simple steps could save you a lot of aggravation and money.

According to the Federal Trade Commission's Care Label Rule, most wearing apparel made to day must have a care label permanently affixed to the article. Unfortunately, many care labels give inaccurate or unclear instructions and continue to confuse both the consumer and the professional drycleaner and launderer.

You may not look at the care label until it is time to have your clothing cleaned, and then you are shocked at the true meaning of the care label, One of the more confusing labels reads: "Do not dryclean., do not wash, spot clean only."

The Care Label Rule clearly states that the instructions on thc label must be followed, and anyone who processes the garment contrary to the label is responsible for garment failure. Because of this fact, many drycleaners have had to tell their customers there is not a process that will spot clean the gar ment successfully. Any spot cleaning procedure will be ineffective in removing under arm stains, cosmetics around the collar, and other general soil. Consequently, your drycleaner may be forced into the unfortunate predicament of telling you that they cannot clean the item.

For further information about care labels, please contact your lo cal IFl member professional dry- cleaner.