Does Your Wedding Dress Smell?

You’ve smelled it before. You picked up your dry-cleaning and noticed that "dry-clean smell." You certainly don’t want to find that aroma on your wedding gown. Is it possible to find a cleaner who can prevent that? It is. You just need to know a little about cleaning solvents to find them. And avoiding odor isn’t your only concern. You want the best care possible for your treasured gown.

So who do you trust? Your local dry-cleaner? A national company? A little bit of knowledge will help you to make an informed decision and avoid potential problems. One thing you may not be aware of is that there are several different solvents used by dry-cleaners to clean wedding gowns. Your gown’s care label may indicate a recommended solvent for your gown. Or the care label may have been removed, and you will have to do your best without it.

This newsletter will arm you with the knowledge you need to find the best cleaning solvent for your gown and avoid that "dry-clean smell."

Wholesale Cleaners
You should be aware that many local dry-cleaners do not clean and preserve gowns in their facilities, but choose to send their customer's bridal gowns out to wholesale dry-cleaners. In determining the best cleaning for your gown, you will need to know which solvents your local cleaner uses, or if he sends bridal gowns out, which solvent the wholesale dry-cleaner uses.

Virgin Solvent
For best results, find a dry-cleaner who uses virgin solvent for cleaning wedding gowns. Because of ecological regulations and expense, solvents are recycled. Impurities that are not filtered out of used solvent can be re-deposited onto garments. Garments cleaned in dirty solvent will have that unpleasant dry clean smell.

A good dry-cleaner will use virgin solvent on all wedding dresses. A clean wedding gown should not smell like cleaning solvent. There should be no noticeable odor.

Petroleum-based solvent
Some bridal gown care labels state, Dry clean only with petroleum based solvent. Both the Stoddard solvent and Exxon DF 2000 are petroleum based. But finding a dry-cleaner who uses one of these can be challenging.

If your gown care label specifies a petroleum based solvent, your local bridal shop may be able to refer you. If they are unable to help you, try looking up dry-cleaning equipment in your local yellow pages. Call a sales representative listed there. They can probably tell you which cleaners in your area use either the Hydro-carbon, Stoddard solvent or DF2000. You may also check out the website www.df2000.com for a list of DF-2000 solvent suppliers by state. You can then call the supplier to find a dry-cleaner who uses DF-2000.

Oxidized Sugar Spots
The most common dry-cleaning solvents currently used for cleaning bridal gowns are perchloroethylene, Stoddard, hydrocarbon, Green-earth and water. All of these solvents (besides water) have one drawback in common. They do not remove sugar substances. They are usually adequate degreasers, but sugar substances will need to be identified and removed with water before cleaning. Otherwise brown spots may occur when the sugar substance oxidizes.

Solvent Comparison

• Perchloroethylene
  Commonly called perc. This is the most common solvent that dry-cleaners use. It is the best solvent for degreasing and may be your best choice if your dress is silk, rayon, or acetate and quite dirty. However, this solvent is more likely to damage sequins and beads, or melt the glue if they are glued on. A very experienced dry-cleaner may know how to protect the sequins and beads on your dress.
• Stoddard Solvent
  Harder to find, this is a petroleum-based solvent that is becoming rare. Because of fire regulations, this solvent cannot be used in strip mall type dry-cleaning establishments, and is therefore not commonly used. You may find this solvent in older dry-cleaning shops. This solvent is safer for cleaning dresses with sequins and beads than perchloroethylene. The Stoddard solvent shouldn't melt beads and sequins or affect the glue if they are glued on.
• Hydro-carbon (Also called Exxon DF-2000 )
  This is a newly formulated petroleum-based solvent. Like the Stoddard solvent, it is safer for beads and sequins, but is not quite as effective at degreasing as perchloroethylene and the Stoddard solvent. However, it has fewer fire restrictions than the Stoddard formula and may be the formula of the future as many dry-cleaning shops change over to this new solvent.
• Greenearth –
  This is a silicone solvent that is also fairly new to the industry but is being picked up by a number of dry-cleaners switching to more environmentally friendly solvents. It is a fair degreaser for your hemline and is safe for beads and sequins. Although it is not a petroleum solvent, it should be safe for any dress whose care label recommends cleaning with a petroleum based solvent.
• Water –
  Believe it or not, water is actually a cleaning solvent. It has always been, and always will be the best cleaning solvent on earth. All food stains (including sugar substances), beverage stains, perspiration, etc. are cleaned better with water. But there are risks of using water on silk, rayon or acetate fabrics. However, there are professional wet cleaners who have processes to reduce those risks and utilize wet process cleaning with wedding dresses. Please note that all polyester dresses can be safely cleaned with water.

When you send your wedding gown to Heritage Garment Preservation, you ensure that it receives the best care available. We hand clean most all our customer’s wedding gowns using wet process cleaning. We also utilize dry-cleaning for some gowns depending on the fabrics, stains, trims, etc.

Receive a FREE Estimate today for your wedding gown’s care. Then relax, knowing your dress is in good hands.

Read our complete “Wedding Dress Cleaning and Preservation Guide” for more information.

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