As Neal and I are planning to start a clothing company in the near future, we’ve been learning all we can about the industry and the various legal requirements.  One of those requirements is the care and content label.    Kathleen has a number of blog posts on labeling over at Fashion Incubator.   On the one hand, a small sewing business doesn’t want the expense of having many different care labels printed.  However, it’s not legal to simply mark everything “Dry Clean Only”.  Kathleen stresses the importance of test washing your materials to determine the correct care procedures.  Neal and I were discussing this the other day and he pointed out this:

The article is a Gap throw.  The care instructions read “Do Not Wash or Dry Clean”.  Since I know Neal’s washed it several times, I have to wonder if Gap did any materials testing on this article and labeled it appropriately.  (I should also note that in our household there’s no such thing as “Do Not Wash”.  My husband washes everything.)