I have a T-shirt that I am particularly fond of that has held up well through the years. Despite being worn quite often and having been put through many a wash there are no holes and the seams are all in tact. So even though it is several years old I can still wear it. The only sign of age is that the color has faded. It’s just a plain solid colored
T-shirt, no text no images. Just a green T-shirt.
Now, one day many years ago I dropped a little blob of mayonnaise on this shirt. Wiped it up, cleaned it, no problem. But now, years later the spot where the mayonnaise had landed has retained almost all of the pigment that was present at the time of the incident while the color has faded significantly and evenly throughout the mayonnaise-free region of the shirt.
What did the mayonnaise do to my shirt? How has the color remained for years?
Would it be a good idea to dipp all of my clothing in mayonnaise???
May manufacturers one day start dipping clothing in mayonnaise and market it as a selling point?
“Pre-dipped in Mayonnaise”???
Since Mayo consists of egg protein, vegetable oil, and vinegar it may be that the vinegar set the colors a bit more than in the original dyeing process.
Oil makes a very nice wood finish. I suspect that that’s what happened here – you got some oil on the pigment and it polymerized a bit, preserving the pigment.
I think you should dip all your clothes in mayonnaise, I’m certain it works.
All my clothes are treated this way, and all of my friends do this, its very common over here, but you do have to use the real stuff, as the cheapo brands have too much vinegary type stuff in them and can damage your clothes.
Once the colours have faded though, not much can be done.
I have heard it said that the reason it is so effective is that lots of washing powders contain very mild bleaches, and whatever it is in mayonnaise, it seems to interfere with the bleaching action, so you colours last longer.
Think about it, one main ingredient in mayo is egg, and egg stain is one heck of a pain to get out of clothing, so this must be the reason it works.
My vote is for the egg yolk in the mayo. Milk and egg protiens are some of the most difficult to get out of fabric and not suprisingly both have been used in extremely tough paints for perhaps thousands of years.
I supposed technically it may be the stain. The initial incident did immediately leave the affected area darker than the rest of the shirt (even before the color started fading over the years).
Still, it’s a green stain on a green shirt and if applied uniformly would be entirely unoffensive.
casdave, you wouldn’t whoosh poor bienville in GQ, would you? Not in GQ?
