Garment Alert Incorrect Care Label Advice Oglia Loro
This is not a Garment Alert but rather technical advice to drycleaners about what to do if you are in a situation where you have a garment to clean without a care label attached. This is a true story!
Scenario:
Last week a drycleaner in Melbourne received a wedding dress for drycleaning and no care label was attached.
There was however a brand/manufacturer label on the dress - OGLIA-LORO - and the drycleaner contacted them directly to point out there was no care label attached listing the material content or the solvent recommended to clean the dress. The drycleaner asked OGLIA-LORO for the cleaning information.
The reply from OGLIA-LORO was:
It comprises 100% pure silk in both its main fabric and inner lining. The corsetry is nylon and the metal in the buttons is aluminium. As couturiers we are exempt from providing care instruction tags as these will only accompany mass produced items.
Please be aware that pressing can be as important as cleaning and performed incorrectly can cause permanent damage. The (replacement)
value of the gown is $15,000. If you require component samples for testing the Client may collect these from us.
If you are not confident please suggest to the Client they contact us for a referral.
Please note the bolded section, this is completely incorrect.
Resolution:
While some items are excluded from having to have permanent care labels permanently affixed to them, wedding dresses are not one of them. Regardless of whether they are mass produced or couture.
Advice was provided to the drycleaner regarding Care Labelling Rules that is available on the ACCC website, please see below:
List of excluded items:
- second hand goods
- some types of men’s, women’s, children’s and infants’ wear
- footwear
- drapery (e.g. cleaning cloths and dusters)
- haberdashery, where instructions are not needed to ensure that the clothing or textile product is not damaged during cleaning and maintenance • some types of furnishings
- jute products
- medical and surgical goods
- canvas goods
- range of miscellaneous goods (e.g. cords, toys, umbrellas, shoelaces). Refer to the consumer protection notice on page 8 for full details on excluded items
Some womenswear is excluded but in the guide there is an excerpt of a Consumer Protection Notice No. 25 of 2010 and it goes into further details of what the exempted womenswear items are:
Men’s, Women’s, Children’s and Infant’s Wear: Unsupported coats (including overcoats, jackets and the like) of PVC film, handkerchiefs, braces, garter suspenders, arm bands, belts, headwear.
Even the exempted items under Haberdashery would not be relevant in this instance for a wedding dress:
Haberdashery: Ornaments, artificial flowers, sewing and embroidery threads and all other small items of haberdashery used in the making of clothing and textile products where instructions are not needed to ensure that the clothing or textile product is not damaged during cleaning and maintenance.
A couturier wedding dress is NOT exempted.