The effects of bleaching and dyeing conditions on abrasion resistance, tear strength, and whiteness of silk fabrics were studied. Different crosslinking agents at various concentrations were introduced into the silk fabrics under various dyeing temperatures and pH. The results indicated that the oxidatively bleached silk fabric exhibited better mechanical properties than those of reductively bleached silk fabric. Sodium citrate was found to be the most suitable crosslinking agent for enhancing the abrasion resistance and tear strength of the silk fabrics with no significant effect on the whiteness. The mechanical property improvements of sodium citrate-dyed silk fabric were attributed to a chemical reaction between -COOH groups and amino acid side chains in silk fabric, the mechanism proposed in this work. Increasing sodium citrate resulted in improved mechanical properties and whiteness, but the opposite trend was found with increasing dyeing temperature. An optimum pH for dyeing the silk fabric in this work was 5.5. (C) 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 91: 1000-1007, 2004.