Message: I saw that someone asked about dying vintage nightgowns and I read your answer, but I just have one question for clarification.  I need to dye vintage slips that are currently white, to a chocolate brown color.  The slips are usually nylon and I don't know what the lace is, so from reading your response, I think I am supposed to use a disperse dye to handle the nylon and the lace (maybe polyester?).  Did I come to the correct conclusion after reading your answer?  Thank you for your time, I just need a quick answer if you have a minute, thanks!

If both the fabric and the lace are nylon, then it's best to use some sort of acid dye. I prefer either Lanaset dyes or the Washfast Acid dyes. The Lanaset dyes are the best, but they also cost twice as much, and the Washfast Acid dyes are good.

Disperse dye will work on nylon, but it's more trouble to use than acid dye, and it is not as washfast on nylon as acid dyes are.

Polyester can't be dyed with acid dye; if you have polyester lace, you must dye it with disperse dye. If you have a combination of polyester and nylon in one garment, the nylon might dye to a somewhat different hue than the polyester, since, in some cases, some of the individual dyes in a premixed dye color will work better on one fiber, while another in the mixture will work better on the other fiber.

I think that nylon lace is more common than polyester lace, but whether this is true for the garments you've been seeing, I don't know. If you have a scrap of the lace, you can try a burn test. Polyester smells sort of sweet when it burns, while burning nylon smells like celery. See 
Fabrics.net's Burn Test page and Ditzy Prints' Fiber Burn Chart. Or, you can just try dyeing with acid dye, and see whether the dye works on the lace, and does not wash out afterwards.

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