Valentine’s Day in Sydney is a restaurant night, and restaurants are where good clothes get ruined. Red wine, olive oil, candle wax, chocolate and pasta sauce account for most of the February 15th arrivals at our counter. The good news is that nearly all of it comes out — provided nobody has attacked it with hot water and a napkin first.

WashMate is in Surry Hills and Leichhardt, both close to Sydney’s main dining strips. For a quote, email info@washmate.com.au.

What to do at the table when something spills

• Blot, never rub — press a clean napkin down and lift; rubbing drives it into the weave and roughs the surface of silk and wool
• Skip the hot water — waiters mean well, but heat sets tannin and protein stains permanently
• Salt on red wine is a holding action — it absorbs some of the liquid, but it is not a fix. Do not consider the job done
• Leave soda water for cotton only — on silk and wool it can leave a water ring worse than the stain
• Do not use the hand dryer — heat is what turns a treatable mark into a permanent one

The five stains a Sydney restaurant produces

• Red wine — tannin, treatable, and much easier the next morning than a fortnight later
• Olive oil and butter — oil-based, which is exactly what solvent dry cleaning handles better than washing
• Candle wax — do not pick at it. It lifts cleanly with heat applied properly, and picking pulls fibres
• Chocolate and dessert sauces — a combination stain: oil, sugar and dye, treated in stages
• Lipstick — waxy and pigmented, and one of the most common marks on a collar or shirt front

The invisible ones that show up in April

Sugar-based spills — white wine, champagne, prosecco, clear cocktails — dry invisibly and oxidise into yellow-brown marks weeks or months later. The garment goes back into the wardrobe looking fine and comes out for the next occasion with a stain nobody remembers causing. If something was spilled and you cannot see it, still mention it when you drop the garment in; treating it now costs nothing extra and prevents the surprise.

Getting it in quickly

February in Sydney is hot and humid, which accelerates everything. A dress left in a bag for a fortnight after Valentine’s Day is a much harder job than one brought in on the 15th. Standard turnaround is 3 to 5 business days, with express and same-day available on pickup and delivery across Sydney metro as well as in-store — book online, email or call and we will confirm what we can do for your timing, subject to availability. Dresses start from $28, evening dresses from $49 and two-piece suits from $37 — see the full price list.

Fabric by fabric, what you are dealing with

• Silk — the least forgiving. Dye-sensitive and protein-based, so heat and alkaline products are both damaging. Water alone can leave a ring
• Wool and wool blends — felts with agitation and heat. Blot only, and never wring a wool garment out
• Cotton and cotton blends — the most robust, and the fabric where soda water is genuinely useful
• Polyester and synthetics — shrug off water-based spills but hold oil stubbornly, which is why salad dressing on a polyester dress is harder than it looks
• Velvet — crushes permanently under pressure, so blotting must be gentle and it should never be rubbed

If you are not sure what a garment is made of, do nothing beyond blotting and bring it in. Doing nothing is almost always better than doing the wrong thing, and it keeps every treatment option open when the garment reaches us.

Frequently asked questions

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