4. Conclusions
Artificial nylon suede poses problems in terms of wash fastness of acid dyes because of the very high surface area of the component supermicrofibres. The need to apply higher amounts of dye to achieve a given depth of shade on the supermicrofibre material
coupled with the dye’s inherent propensity to desorb from the dyed suede because of the high fibre surface area, results in characteristic poor wash fastness of acid dyes on artificial suede materials. The fastness of nylon suede which had been dyed with 5% omf of the three 1:2 pre-metallised acid dyes was markedly improved by an after treatment with the full backtan. However, although the full backtanned acid dyeing exhibited reduced dye loss during repeatedwashing at 60 C, a considerable amount of colour loss still occurred during repeated wash testing