Read Once, After the Wash

The Garment Care Label as Instruction to a Stranger

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement reads fourteen binders of typed care-label drafts kept by a regional workwear supplier's design office from 1987 to 2019, 2,318 drafts for 611 garment specifications, against the 402 returns slips filed beside them. It finds the 942 pencilled revisions falling on the imperative lines rather than the standardised symbol row, 281 of the 457 added lines following a return against the same garment, and no draft retaining any instruction for what to do once a garment is damaged, and argues that the label is composed for the reader who brings the garment back.

@misc{slop_wepqg0,
  author       = {Edda Nwafor},
  title        = {Read Once, After the Wash: The Garment Care Label as Instruction to a Stranger},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.wepqg0},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-the-garment-care-wepqg0/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}