This Ronald Joyce dress had been left for 7 years covered in alcohol and mud. With lots of hard work and dedication I managed to get it back to how it was when first purchased! One very happy customer!!
Wedding gown yellowing is caused by a chemical degradation of the original fibers that compose the fabric. Over time the colourless chemicals that are within the fabric begin the inevitable process of decay and can become light to moderately yellow in colour or even a darkish brown.
This 50 years old dress was given to me just two days ago to restore by #handwash only, as a surprise for my customer’s mother, whose dress it is, as a gift for her Golden wedding anniversary in 2 weeks time! I wish I could be there to see her face when she opens the box to see her dress looking like it did the day she wore it
This dress had lots of fake tan all over the inside and outside of the bodice. As it had been left a fair while before being given to me to clean it took some doing but I finally managed to get it spotless as you can see from the last image.
This one came in extremely dirty at the bottom, as you can see from the following two images it came up a treat.
This dress had thick dried-in tar or grease all over it. Nothing was going to remove this, but I persisted, asking the owner if I could hang on to the dress whilst I tried several methods.. I finally got there with it as you can see from the end photo!
This one below had quite a few nasty stains to get out from within the inside of the bodice. This is after I spot-cleaned it, but before it was washed.. She came up even cleaner after that!
As you can see, lots of red wine and mud on this beautiful dress which I managed to get completely spotless.
And another very dirty wedding dress cleaned back to its original condition.
Yes, I use a toothbrush to go round spot cleaning all wedding dresses. You can imagine how painstakingly time consuming that must be on a huge ball-gown style dress with many layers! This particular toothbrush has just gone into retirement after faithfully cleaning over 100 wedding dresses! Time for a new one to step in and take over! She has served me well!
Having been stored in a plastic bag in the attic for 29 years, Phil phoned to ask if I could restore his late wife’s stunning dress so that his daughter could wear it for her wedding in Australia. This was a huge challenge and I’m glad to say it looks like she will be able to wear the dress as proudly as her mum did 29 years ago.