Message: Hi,

I have a black designer silk shirt that was accidentally washed in the washing machine. I wanted to know if I can restore the black color to the silk shirt. The shirt currently looks very old and wrinkled with light streaks of whites. Is there anything I can do or is there a professional cleaner that can redye this silk shirt? Please help...thank you in advance...Matt

How very unfortunate that the shirt was dyed with non-washable dyes! There's really no excuse for dyeing clothing with dyes that must be dry cleaned, when washing clothing with water instead of toxic solvents is so much better for the environment, and possibly for your own health, as well. (There is some thought that hanging freshly dry-leaned garments in a bedroom closet, thus causing all-night exposure to the cleaning chemicals, may increase one's risk of lymphoma.)

Fixing your shirt will be a fair amount of trouble. You might find it a better use of your time to just go out and buy another shirt. I recommend that you try a different designer, this time! There are a few professionals who can redye clothing listed on my page Where can I find someone to dye my clothing for me?, but there's no guarantee that they can make the shirt like new. Contact the dyer to find out how much it restoring your shirt would cost.

If you want to spend a fair amount of effort on attempting to resuscitate your shirt, the first thing you should do is to try to remove as much of the remaining dye as possible. Since dye is transparent, you will find it difficult or impossible to cover up the streaks you currently have in your shirt. Try washing it or soaking it in hot water. Hot water removes dye more efficiently than cold water does, especially if you soak it.

If that does not work, you could try using Rit Color Remover to neutralize what remains of the dye. Rit Color Remover works very well on many dyes, but not on all dyes. There are some dyes that cannot be chemically discharged, no matter what you do. You should never use a chlorine-containing bleach on silk, but Rit Color Remover is based on sulfur, rather than chlorine, and is gentler to fabric.

If you are able to remove the streaks from your shirt, o that it is all a single solid color, then you can redye it, this time using a higher quality dye than the slackers employed by your "designer" did. The very best black dye for silk is the Lanaset Jet Black. You can order Lanaset Jet Black from Paradise Fibers or from Pro Chemical & Dye, among other sources. Somewhat more economically, you can order PRO Chemical & Dye's Washfast Acid Dye Jet Black, which contains one of the two dyes combined in the Lanaset Jet Black. You will need to apply the dye in a very large non-aluminum cooking pot, one which, moreover, you ought not to reuse for cooking, ever again, since clothing dye is not safe for food. The manufacturer can give you a page of instructions and will tell you which additional chemicals you will need to use this particular dye.

Cold water fiber reactive dyes, such as Procion MX dyes, work extremely well on silk, especially when used with the same soda ash recipe that you would use on cotton, but the mixed colors will tend to produce unexpected hues when used on silk. A black Procion MX dye misture may produce another color, such as olive green, when used on silk. PRO Chemical & Dye sells a dye called PRO MX Silk Black ("PRO MX" is their brand name for the same dyes known elsewhere as Procion MX), which will produce black on silk if you use a large enough amount of dye. Alternatively you can use either Dylon Machine Dye or Dylon Permanent Dye, in black; this dye will produce a true black regardless of what fiber it is used upon, because it is not a mixture. However, both soda ash, and the TSP used instead of soda ash in the Dylon MAchine dye and the Dyelon Permanent dye, will make the silk somewhat softer and a little less shiny. The advantage is that you can use these fiber reactive dyes in a cheap plastic bucket, so that you don't need to ruin an expensive cooking pot, as you do when using acid dyes or all-purpose dyes, which need to be cooked with the fiber.

As far as the wrinkles you are seeing in your shirt are concerned, they might be a greater problem than the color. You will have to use an iron to remove the wrinkles; ironing a shirt well is a skill that fewer people now have than used to have. You can always take a garment to the dry cleaners and ask them to iron it for you; this often costs just as much as the total cost of cleaning and ironing would be, since ironing is the most effort-intensive part of dry cleaning. Whether your designer shirt has become permanently inclined to wrinkle, a the result of having some water-soluble sizing used to stiffen the fabric, is something you will know only after you have tried it. It is possible that this shirt was made badly in more than one way, both the ridiculously water-soluble dye, and some sort of water-soluble treatment that gave it a temporary smooth finish.

I feel that you were cheated when you bought this "designer" silk shirt. Inferior materials were used, on the assumption that you would always dry-clean the item. If better materials had been used, the shirt would not have been damaged by washing. Silk has been used for clothing for thousands of years, but dry cleaning has existed for less than a single century. It makes no sense to use materials so inadequate that they cannot survive a single washing. However, if the shirt was labeled "dry clean only", then the manufacturer has no legal responsibility to use dyes and finishes of a high enough quality to survive exposure to water.

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