Coated collar breaks up

1 February 2002




Problem: A beige cotton jacket with a leather-look trim on the collar was drycleaned but during cleaning the trim surface lifted and broke up.

Cause: The problem here is that the material round the collar fold flexes continually in normal wear causing stretching and lifting of the leather-look surface and tiny cracks at the fold itself. This then breaks down totally in the drycleaning machine process because solvent penetrates the tiny fissures in the surface.

The normal tumbling action that is an integral part of the cleaning cycle does the rest.

Responsibility: This garment was labelled for normal drycleaning and a brand new garment would probably have survived a single cleaning in perc.

In order to detect and correct this fault, the prototype should have been given at least three test cleans with intervening periods of normal wear.This could have taken a week or two but the delay and cost would have been far less catastrophic than writing off the entire range.



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