Care Labels in Leather Garments

Although not compulsory in the UK, care labels can be found on most garments, although the most common label for leather garments is "specialist clean only". This indicates to the consumer that the garment requires attention by a specialist cleaner, who will select the most appropriate process based on their knowledge and experience.

The cleaning process chosen for a particular garment may depend on several factors:

	Type of leather (suede, oily, nubuck etc)
	Degree of soiling
	Colour of the garment
	Previous experience

There is a British Standard guideline for the "Dry Cleanability of Leather Garments" (BS7269:part 1:1991) which includes symbols specifying which drycleaning process should be used, but this standard is now out of date as two of the three solvents it mentions are no longer used, and other processes are now available which are not mentioned in the standard.

The leather care symbols are separate from the GINETEX care symbols used in textile care labels in the UK and Europe.