Unsung Heroes Sew Up the Tough Cases

The victim was a size 4 from China by way of Wilmington, N.C. She was the kind of cute, flirty summer sweetheart who could bring a smile to your face.

No one was smiling now. Someone would have to pay.

"Here you can see the spillage pattern," says Chris Allsbrooks as we both lean over the victim. There isn't a body, at least not any more. Acid is nasty that way.

We're looking at a pink and green sleeveless summer frock. The dress's owner is very much alive, but the dress is ruined, marred by little spots and pocked by a half-dozen tiny holes. It's up to Chris to figure out what happened.

Welcome to "CSI: Dry Cleaning." Dry cleaners from around the country send ruined garments to Chris and her co-workers at the Drycleaning & Laundry Institute International in Laurel. What caused this stain? Why did these pants rip? Where did my sequins go? Chris and her fellow textile analysts can answer those questions.

Members of the trade association pay $32 per garment for the fabric forensic work-up. The textile analysis lab gets 5,000 such garments a year, delivered to a low building not far from I-95 and Route 198. The place is a repository of dry-cleaning horror stories.

Chris is 39, lives in Bowie and has a degree in textiles from the University of Maryland. Red wine on a wedding dress can still make her shudder, but otherwise she has the unruffled demeanor of a police officer who can handle a messy multiple homicide and still keep her lunch down. While customers can be quick to blame the cleaner -- often agitating to be compensated for a silk blouse suddenly fit only to clean a sow's ear -- Chris uses science and Sherlock Holmesian logic to get to the bottom of the story.

For example, here's another victim: a light brown men's casual shirt, stained yellow at the collar. Did the dry cleaner do it? Well, note that the stain is only on the inside of the collar, not through to the outside, as would be the case if the cleaner scrubbed with a liquid dirt remover. Furthermore, a distinctive pattern on the inside of the top button area -- and not, my dear Watson, on the button hole area -- indicates the fabric came in contact with something on the owner's neck. The likely culprit: benzyl peroxide in acne medication.

Chris spreads a blue silk skirt out on the table in front of her. A ragged white pattern radiates from the center of the garment. "This I attribute to the latest state of the airline industry," she says. When the bottle of perfume you packed in your checked luggage because you can't bring it in your carry-on breaks, this is what you get. "Alcohol color loss" Chris calls it. It probably looked like a mere water stain when the skirt was brought to the cleaners, but the heat of the dry-cleaning process made it go all tie-dyed.

A lavender tunic from Alabama is studded with flat white beads that have migrated from their original position around the hem. The loop stitches that once held them in place are intact. The care label reads "Dry Clean Only." But rub a solvent-soaked Q Tip against a bead and it starts to dissolve. No wonder the beads shifted.

A lot of the problems encountered in the lab are due to this sort of bad labeling or to manufacturers who haven't got the fabric quite right. A few years ago, some dry cleaners stopped laundering brightly colored Tommy Hilfiger shirts. They weren't colorfast. The lab also tests items before they go into production. It can cost $2 million to replace all the bed linens in a luxury hotel -- a process known as "resheeting" -- so you'd better be sure they're going to last.

As for our dress, from an insurance clerk in Wilmington (knowing the occupation sometimes helps), Chris shines a UV light on it (just like on "CSI"!).

"There's something here not visible when we viewed it under natural light, some light discoloration here around the edge." She moistens the fabric with distilled water then holds a strip of blue pH paper against it. It turns pink: acid.

"It could be a beverage that spilled. It might be a skin preparation. . . . It could be hair preparation."

What it wasn't-- this time -- was something the dry cleaner did. Case closed.

For a video tour of the textile analysis lab, go tohttp://www.washingtonpost.com/johnkelly.