Red, White, and BLEARGH!

April 1, 2012 8:15 AM

I bought this old Escada sweater at a thrift store for a few bucks. It had a few small brown stains that I figured I could live with, but after I got it home I realized that it had a HUGE yellowish armpit stain on one side. What (if anything) can be done?

The sweater is 100% cotton. I'd love to be able to salvage it somehow, as the fit is really good. What would you do?

posted by hermitosis to clothing, beauty, & fashion (12 answers total)

I have a friend who is aces at secondhand, thrift, and consignment--as well as storing and refreshing clothes, and I know she uses oxyclean soaks for gray and yellow staining and discoloring. Since the embroidery/applique areas are well away from the lateral parts of the sweater, it seems you'd be easily able to apply an oxyclean solution to the area and see what happens. You could start with a weaker solution and titrate up once you got a sense of the results. Since it is cotton, once you removed the stain, you could wash in cold/gentle and flat dry.
posted by rumposinc at 8:27 AM on April 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

WikiHow has several methods for removing such stains. You might find one of them works for you.
posted by hippybear at 8:42 AM on April 1, 2012

I have had good results on yellow sweat stains with a soak in oxyclean.

(including on my great-grandmother's 1914 cotton lawn wedding dress, which was badly yellowed, but then after an 8 hour soak in a bathtub in a weak oxyclean solution was white enough for me to wear to get married in myself!)
posted by leahwrenn at 8:42 AM on April 1, 2012 [8 favorites]

If Oxyclean doesn't do it, maybe consult with a higher-end dry cleaner -- they deal with these things all the time, and have some pretty potent cleaning chemicals that might be able to do what the household stuff can't.
posted by El Sabor Asiatico at 8:55 AM on April 1, 2012

Yeah, oxygen bleach (OxyClean) will almost certainly handle this.
posted by pullayup at 9:11 AM on April 1, 2012

I have had good results on yellow sweat stains with a soak in oxyclean.

(including on my great-grandmother's 1914 cotton lawn wedding dress, which was badly yellowed, but then after an 8 hour soak in a bathtub in a weak oxyclean solution was white enough for me to wear to get married in myself!)


I refuse to believe this until it has been verified with a photo



(because I would really like to see a photo of this amazing-sounding dress).
posted by vitabellosi at 9:17 AM on April 1, 2012 [5 favorites]

I'll go buy some of the Oxy stuff and give it a try, will check back later on.
posted by hermitosis at 9:21 AM on April 1, 2012

I haven't used it yet, but I bought some DeoGo from Drugstore.com recently - it had really good reviews.
posted by echo0720 at 10:02 AM on April 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

That trim is knit, right, part of the garment and not a ribbon sewn on? On the off chance it is sewn on (I think I am being thrown off by a grosgrain reinforcement on the interior of the placket {?}), gently simmering the whole thing in dye remover would do it; I'd be confident that all trims were artificial fibres which wouldn't respond to the dye remover. Last-ditch, but a good last ditch. Otherwise nthing OxiClean, preference for the spray variety; also a fan of Tide Stain Release. With either, dump it on undiluted, soak the area, and then after 24h or so chuck it in the soak cycle with even more of the stain remover. If the red on cuffs etc is cotton and integral rather than a sewn-on trim, don't worry; this won't wreck that. Then when it comes out with a trace of the stain that only you can see, hang it up in your sunniest window, take down in a few weeks, enjoy.
posted by kmennie at 12:41 PM on April 1, 2012

The red is part of the garment! Thanks for the additional advice.
posted by hermitosis at 12:48 PM on April 1, 2012

Buy the baby Oxyclean. Not sure why, but it works way better than the other types.
posted by Go Banana at 3:18 PM on April 1, 2012

Good news, I soaked it all afternoon and the stains are either gone, or so faded that you'd never be able to see them. The thing is drying right now, I'm very excited to be able to wear it without looking like I'd been buried in it.
posted by hermitosis at 4:09 PM on April 1, 2012