The winner of the recent Miss South Florida Fair pageant was confronted with a real dilemma when she discovered that her $3,400 light-blue evening gown had been vandalized backstage, with streaks of bright red lipstick down the back side of the dress. Frantically trying to erase the lipstick stain with spot cleaners, rubbing alcohol and finally liquid hand-soap, nothing worked to lift the red streaks. She had no other choice but to wear the dress, stains and all. The dress was quickly soaked and dried with a blow dryer to remove the water rings left by their attempts to remove the stains.
So how do your remove lipstick stains from clothing? There are several <a href="http://www.laundrygoddess.com">laundry tips</a> you can try, depending on the type of fabric. In the case of the beauty pagent dress, the fabric was made of some sort of satin and the lipstick was a dark red metallic color. So the combination of a hard to clean fabric combined with whatever ingredients were in that lipstick would have made it impossible to quickly remove the stain.
First - Read the care label on the garment. If it is dry clean only - get it to the dry cleaners right away. Trying to lift the stain yourself may only make their job more difficult.
Second - Never rub the stain - you could end up grinding the grease further into the fabric.
Third - Lipstick is a grease-based cosmetic, so you should stick to stain removers that fight oil and grease. Dawn dishwashing liquid is a popular choice. Try a few drops in water and dab on the stain until the bulk of it is removed. Rinse and repeat, you should see a definite improvement.
Lipstick on your collar? No dishsoap handy? Try using a clean white cloth moistened with rubbing alcohol, and dab the stain (no, it didn't work on that dress, but it usually works on shirts). Follow up with dishwashing detergent or your favorite stain remover as soon as possible.
