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- A woman purchased a dress for a wedding and worried it was “too white.”
- After some “late-night panic,” she decided to dye the dress herself with baby oil.
- She shared before-and-after photos of the successful DIY project on Reddit.
Unless you’re Kylie Jenner at the nuptials of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez, being a well-dressed wedding guest typically involves one cardinal rule: don’t wear white. Likewise, lighter hues like baby blue and butter yellow are troublesome for their proximity to white. Case in point? When one woman purchased a “pale blue” dress for a friend’s wedding and realized it might be “too white,” she took matters into her own hands: by dyeing the garment with baby oil.
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The wedding guest documented her DIY process on Reddit. By her telling, it all started when she hung the dress over her door and it began “taunting” her with its ambiguous hue. “Cue the late-night panic,” she wrote.
“I remembered a couple of clothes I’d accidentally stained with baby oil before, and how the marks created a stain that was the same colour but darker,” she continued. “That gave me the idea to try something similar—but on purpose.”
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The Reddit user shared before-and-after photos of the jacquard dress, which appears significantly more pigmented after being dyed. As for the process itself, it was strikingly simple. After dousing the dress in baby oil with a spray bottle, she ironed the fabric, let it rest, put it in the washing machine, and let it air dry.
“Because it’s polyester jacquard, the texture helped hide any unevenness—and the oil subtly deepened the tone just enough to take away the ‘too white’ look without turning it into a full stain,” she explained. “The finish is still soft, no residue, and totally wearable.”
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The writer added that the dress “feels as it did before my bonkers idea,” and fellow Reddit users were understandably impressed. “This is absolutely brilliant!” One commented. “I have a shirt that I stained in a similar way, I saved it even though I consider it I’m wearable. Thank you for giving me a way to fix it!”
Another wrote that she “took a hell of a gamble” and congratulated her on the success of her project. Others warned of the potential fire hazard of the dress given that oil is a flammable substance.
“Baby oil is not flammable under any of the conditions I’ll be exposed to at the wedding but thank u so much for doing the right thing and being safety conscious (I am not),” she joked.
