Leather Perfect: Cleaning, Repair, Alterations

Anti-Aging for the Leather You Love

04/28/2007 Suede & Leather Cleaning

Decision making information:

Leather is a natural product also known as suede, sheepskin, leather, pigskin, goatskin etc.
Leather is the skin of the animal and is referred to as hide before processing. The skins are washed in water, tanned and stretched before being pared and cut to shape. Although prepared in a water process they have to be dry cleaned once made up into a garment.
Each panel in a leather garment has come from a different animal, for this reason color variation will occur.
Hides are batch dyed before being made up into a garment ensuring uniformity of color on the finished garment. The process also covers up imperfections in the skins, which may only become apparent after cleaning.
Look carefully at suede in particular and you will see natural lines occurring in the skin, the more expensive the garment, the less likely you will notice them. These are natural, they are veins.
All garments have multiple panels making up the item. They will almost certainly loose some color in cleaning and this will be more noticeable on suede than leather
Suede and Leather has natural oils, these oils can be removed in dry cleaning, the final part of the cleaning process replaces the lost oils, so that the garment returns to its original state.
Leather is fashionable and comes with many different finishes. Popular are painted finishes, this may not be apparent to the wearer, but they do not clean well. In many cases they can appear faded after cleaning as the paint is partially removed. In worst cases the paint can be completely removed even though the care label states "dry clean."
Ball point pen ink can not be removed from painted finishes, because in doing so this will remove the paint as well.
Alcohol spilt on Suede & Leather will stain and may not be removed in dry cleaning. When spilt on painted leather it could remove some of the paint, and whilst not necessarily noticeable before cleaning it will after cleaning as the soiling has been removed.
Suede can change texture after cleaning and may well become less supple. This should improve after some hours of wear.
Severely soiled and dirty items such as suede may not clean at all well, and the customer should be advised of this when taking in the garment. Your own hands when extremely dirty do not come easily clean with soap and water so bear this in mind with dry cleaning.
As part of our cleaning process the garments are automatically treated with stain-guard or equivalent silicone product. This will not make the garment waterproof, but will help to protect against soiling.
New garments can be stain-guarded without being cleaned.
If a garment looks clean, advise against cleaning, as stated above if it is suede it may shrink slightly, relax and or move and may not look quite the same after cleaning. (a well worn item will have already lost shape and thus after cleaning should be improved).
Extreme caution should be exercised when taking in any leather garments;

Never commit to removing stains, but "we will do our best"
Always advise that there may be slight color loss, but probably not noticeable, we always try to ensure that the item comes back to the original color after cleaning
Suede is always particularly difficult as in (b) above
Some suede has seams that are glued together, lapels, pocket flaps etc. this glue can migrate through suede and show as dark marks on the surface of the suede. It can never be removed! If the manufacturer has used the correct glue this should not be a problem. If the garment's care label states that the garment can be dry cleaned then if migration occurs the manufacturer should replace the item
Joseph suede & leather items whilst expensive are notoriously difficult to clean, some dry cleaners to the trade will only take on the cleaning if FULL owners risk is obtained. It is better to advise the customer of any risks and if necessary to take owners risk. The common problem is color loss and shrinkage
All suede and some leather will shrink in cleaning, usually only slightly some 2%-3% (or within British Standards)