Car seats are there for a lot: every traffic-induced meltdown, every spilled juice box, every road trip nap. Most importantly, they save lives. But while it’s tempting to treat them like any other piece of kid gear when messes strike, they’re not just another item you can toss in the wash. They’re precision-built safety devices, and one misstep can compromise the parts designed to protect your child.

This guide walks you through how to properly clean a car seat, what not to do, and when to call a professional so your child stays protected, no matter how messy the ride gets.

For more, check out our guides to the Best Car Vacuums, Best Hand Vacuums, and Best Eco-Friendly Cleaning Products. For specific baby gear recommendations, check out our guides to the Best Baby Monitors, Best Breast Pumps, Best Strollers, Best Travel Strollers, Best Bassinets, and Best Baby Carriers.

Why Proper Car Seat Cleaning Matters

A quick toss in the washing machine may seem harmless, but it can ruin a car seat: “It could degrade the harness webbing itself, so it could weaken it,” says Kyndra Webb, a child passenger safety technician instructor and member of the National Child Passenger Safety Board. A harness is the only thing between your child and physics in a car crash.

Aggressive cleaning or machine washing can also shrink or distort covers, or strip away protective coatings. “A lot of them have fire retardants,” Webb says. “The more you wash it, the more you degrade some of that safety quality.”

Even perfect cleaning techniques can be undermined by one deceptively difficult step—putting everything back together. “The biggest thing that I have seen when families come for a car seat check after they’ve washed it, especially if they bought their car seat used, is they’re not assembling it correctly again,” Webb says. A car seat may look pristine and even be properly installed, but if the harness is routed wrong or the clips aren’t in place, it’s not doing its job.

That said, the stakes are too high to wing it. By sticking to the script of proper cleaning guidelines and manufacturer instructions, your seat can be both sanitary and road-trip ready.

How to Find a Car Seat Manual

Before you even think about reaching for those cleaning supplies, break out your car seat’s manual. If you can’t find the booklet that came with the seat, you can likely find it online: Visit your car seat manufacturer’s website, search for your specific model, and look out for links labeled “Manual,” “Instructions,” or “Support.”

The cleaning guidelines are then usually found in a dedicated section of the manual. “Some car seats even have QR codes now, so you can scan the code to bring you right to their website’s FAQs and their help,” Webb says. “Sometimes it’ll even bring you to their YouTube channel.”

If all else fails, contact customer service. “A lot of the manufacturers have child passenger safety technicians on staff,” Webb says. “They know their car seats, they know their products.” They’re the experts who can provide specific guidance for your model.

Iraq is set to open the country’s first industrial-scale solar plant Sunday in a vast expanse of desert in Karbala province, southwest of Baghdad.

It’s part of a new push by the government to expand renewable energy production in a country that is frequently beset by electricity crises despite being rich in oil and gas.

“This is the first project of its type in Iraq that has this capacity,” said Safaa Hussein, executive director of the new solar plant in Karbala, standing in front of row after row of black panels. From above, the project looks like a black-clad city surrounded by sand.

The plant aims to “supply the national network with electricity, and reduce the fuel consumption especially during the daytime peak load, in addition to reducing the negative environmental impact of gas emissions,” he said.

The newly opened solar plant in Karbala will eventually be able to produce up to 300 megawatts of electricity at its peak, said Nasser Karim al-Sudani, head of the national team for solar energy projects in the Prime Minister’s Office. Another project under construction in Babil province will have a capacity of 225 megawatts, and work will also begin soon on a 1,000 megawatt project in the southern province of Basra, he said.

The projects are part of an ambitious plan to implement large-scale solar power projects in an effort to ease the country’s chronic electricity shortages.

Deputy Minister of Electricity Adel Karim said Iraq has solar projects with a combined capacity of 12,500 megawatts either being implemented, in the approval process, or under negotiation. If fully realized, these projects would supply between 15% and 20% of Iraq’s total electricity demand, excluding the semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region, he said.

“All the companies we have contracted with, or are still negotiating with, will sell us electricity at very attractive prices, and we will in turn sell it to consumers,” Karim said, although he declined to disclose the purchase rates.

Despite its oil and gas wealth, Iraq has suffered from decades of electricity shortages because of war, corruption and mismanagement. Power outages are common, especially in the scorching summer months. Many Iraqis have to rely on diesel generators or suffer through temperatures that exceed 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) without air conditioning.

• 

• 

• 

Currently, Iraq produces between 27,000 and 28,000 megawatts of electricity, Karim said, while nationwide consumption ranges from 50,000 to 55,000 megawatts. Power plants fueled by Iranian gas contribute about 8,000 megawatts of the current supply.

Iraq’s heavy reliance on imported Iranian gas, as well as electricity imported directly from Iran to meet its electricity needs, is an arrangement that risks running afoul of U.S. sanctions.

Earlier this year, Washington ended a sanctions waiver for direct electricity purchases from Iran but left the waiver for gas imports in place.

© 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionise fashion design. By recognising patterns in data and generating new text and images, AI models powered by deep learning algorithms can help fashion designers develop new catalogues, expanding creativity and helping bring products to market faster, as per a study by Pusan National University.

Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and AI image generators like DALL-E have shown promising results across industries and popularised the use of AI. In fashion, LLMs can help designers and non-experts understand past styles and predict future fashion trends. These insights can then generate prompts for AI image generators to produce real fashion collections. As such, it is increasingly important to understand how AI can be effectively integrated into fashion.

In a recent study, professor Yoon Kyung Lee and master’s student Chaehi Ryu, from the Department of Clothing and Textiles at Pusan National University, South Korea, explored how generative AI can contribute to visualising seasonal fashion trends. “To use AI effectively in fashion, we must understand the characteristics of generative AI models and make informed judgements of where they can be applied,” explained. Lee. “In this study, we studied how effective prompt engineering can be used to generate realistic fashion collection images through AI.”

A study by Pusan National University shows that generative AI, using tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E 3, can help visualise and predict fashion trends.
By analysing past data and crafting precise prompts, AI generated realistic Fall/Winter 2024 men’s fashion images.
While effective, limitations remain, highlighting the need for expert input.

Using ChatGPT-3.5 and ChatGPT-4, the researchers first analysed men’s fashion trends, based on historical data up to September 2021. From this, they used ChatGPT to predict men’s fashion trends for Fall/Winter 2024. Design elements from these predictions were classified as ‘initial codes’. In addition, design elements from Vogue’s 2024 Fall/Winter Men’s Fashion Trend data were used as ‘modified codes’, and those from literature as ‘codes from literature’. These were then regrouped into six final codes: trends, silhouette elements, materials, key items, garment details, and embellishments.

Using these codes, they created 35 prompts for DALL-E 3, each describing a unique outfit. The prompts followed a consistent template featuring a male model walking down a runway at a 2024 Fall/Winter fashion show. The template allowed customisation of event details, including aspect ratios, events, camera angles, model appearance and height, runway design, background, and audience details, and moods. Each prompt was run three times, generating a total of 105 images.

DALL-E 3 was able to perfectly implement the prompts 67.6 per cent of the time. Prompts with adjectives demonstrated a high implementation rate. Some generated images closely resembled actual 2024 Fall/Winter Men’s fashion collections. However, there were errors—most leaned toward ready-to-wear fashion, and DALL-E struggled with trend elements like gender fluidity. Trend keywords alone were insufficient to generate accurate results, indicating a need for further learning.

“Our results show that expertly worded prompts are necessary for accurate fashion design implementation of generative AI, highlighting the important role of fashion experts,” added Lee. “With further learning and improvements, generative AI models like DALL-E 3 will help fashion designers create entire fashion collections more efficiently, while supporting their creativity, and also help non-experts understand fashion trends.”

The study shows that generative AI can be a powerful tool not just for professionals but also for the general public, making it easier than ever to explore, predict, and style the upcoming season’s fashion with confidence.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (RR)