Has anyone ever had any success eliminating cream/yellow aging on white fabric (grosgrain, pics)?

M

mercyonthesubway

Registered Guest
Hello everyone,

I'm just canvassing for wider experience here. I tried on a beautifully tailored grosgrain wedding dress today. Alas, in daylight, you can see that it was once gleaming white, but all exposed surfaces are now an even cream. Lift up the pleats/folds, you see white. There is a bit of a transition from one to the other across the skirt. Fabric is otherwise strong - a quality, tailor-made dress with all internal trimmings.

Any thoughts about whether anything can be done about the 'cream'-ing?
Apologies for the terrible pictures:
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6246585683


Many thanks, Lin
 
Hi,

I cannot give any advice on treatment, I will wait to see what others say. It is not referred to as grosgrain, the term would be faille (file). First you will have to determine the fiber content, is it silk, rayon, synthetic, etc? Then a treatment can be decided on. Keep in mind that even if you can wash/soak it successfully to remove the yellowing, wetting a faille can often remove some its body or sizing and it can look limp or the finish will look dull.

It is really a wonderful style. Best of luck.
 
That is a striking dress, and I would not treat it with anything that requires dampening it. If you know a very good dry cleaner, I would have it dry cleaned, but that still won't restore the gleaming white color, but should lighten any really dark or stained areas. As long as the age-induced yellowing or cream coloring is fairly even, I would then just wear as is and enjoy it! Nobody will be bothered by it, I am sure!
 
Hi Barbara,

Thanks so much for your advice. You're right: faille. It's definitely heavier than grosgrain.

Unfortunately I cannot determine the fibre content, beyond knowing that it is very heavy, quality stuff (according to the label, it was custom-made at Jenners, Edinburgh - I've only had cashmere with that label before). I suspect it might be silk or perhaps a silk/rayon mix. I have not bought the dress yet, as the purchase really depends on my assessment of whether I can establish an even tone, or live with the variation (I have a day to decide!). I would not want to soak this myself at all. It would indeed ruin the pleating and shaping around the bodice (the pictures here don't show this well, it only really works when it's filled out in three dimensions). So it would go to a specialist dry cleaner (gulp), if anything.
Thanks again, L
 
Ah, cross-posted with Anne, thanks.

Yes, I do suspect it's a matter of working out whether I can live with the unevenness. It's more or less even, apart from under the arms (not arm pits) and across the front of the skirt (erk!), both places where it has clearly been unevenly exposed to sunlight. The opposite of fade, effectively.

Hmmmmmmmm. *ponders*
 
I doubt it will come all the way put. Just be sure to get a price quote from the cleaners before you have them do any work. A wedding dress can be cost prohibitive.

Hollis
 
This looks like a major undertaking...if the dress is inexpensive you could perhaps take a chance on it. I would say that Folex may work on this sort of fabric, but it appears you would need a lot of it and a lot of patience...as you would need to let it dry preferably in the sun and reapply and reapply and reapply!!!

If you decided to try the Folex, take a q-tip and try a very small area to see how the fabric would react.
 
I agree with Hollis. Unfortunately, even specialist dry cleaning will not successfully restore this dress. The dress could be professionally dyed a darker colour but the cost may be prohibitive and you want a white dress. The dress looks to have sun/light damage from storage and those areas will be weakened.
 
I have this synthetic 60s evening dress where I already asked about what to call the fabric. It has yellowing too, especially at the bottom as you can see, and even my super dry-cleaner whom I can give all my delicate vintage stuff with confidence, could do nothing about it...
whitedress8.jpg
whitedress5.jpg


Karin
 
If you chose this for your own wedding, I've seen some amazing transformations out there by professional wedding dress restorers who restore heirloom dresses. This is very expensive though. If you purchased it for resale, I would just get it drycleaned, disclose all remaining issues and leave the rest up to your buyer. I'm absolutely in love with the design and the fabric. It's a really great dress.
 
I'm returning after a long break to thank everyone who added further advice on this thread. I agonized about it for a few hours. The next day, it turned out, I really didn't have time to go back to the shop to have another look. The other decider was that I wasn't sure, physically, that I could have brought this back on the train with me. I do also think that the colour would have been very difficult to restore, probably beyond my means.

Yes, it was under consideration for my own wedding - I don't tend to buy to resell any more. So, I'm still looking, and perhaps for a simpler, earlier style.

This was a sad case though - a really spectacular dress, quality-wise, that had just been stored wrongly. Possibly just in the last few years.

I still came away from the shop with a reasonably-priced 50s cashmere sweater and a great novelty screen-printed tea towel that I'll put up on my blog some time, so I feel at least I was a reasonable customer in actually buying things, rather than standing in the middle of the floor dithering over this tragic gown.

Thanks again everyone - really great to be able to talk this over!
Lin
 
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