The Chimenti family christening dress has an amazing “survival” story. But when we received it we were concerned about the mold and residual stains from the Hurricane Katrina flood that it survived. But we were fairly confident we could whiten the dress and restore it. During the whitening process we ran into a problem.
The blue trim on the christening gown faded in a few areas on the dress but the same blue trim did not fade on the under slip. We were very confused as both were treated with the same restoration chemicals. But after calling and speaking with (?) we found out the under slip was not with the dress when Katrina hit. The pieces were separated. So using our best crime solving deductions we determined that something in the flood water must have reacted with the whitening process causing the different response to the same chemicals.
We contacted Shirelle Chimenti and offered to restore the blue trim, but she opted to have us remove the blue from both the dress and under slip to have them all white. The process we used turned out BEAUTIFULLY! Both the under slip and dress look like new. We added new ribbon and made a custom preservation bag and preserved it using our Museum Method Preservation. We were thrilled with the results and so happy the Chimenti family was as well.
