The Tie
I attended a Luxury Marketing Council social event last evening at Apotheke
in NYC on Doyers Street. Interesting place, great look. A chemistry laboratory of cocktails.
As the evening wound on and the space become more crowed the inevitability of a spill became more pronounced. Fruity cocktails in shades of red seemed to be the libation of choice.
At once a drink in hand leaped as a young lady serving (quite hip in a macrame shawl and matching headband) jostled the gentleman standing a few feet away.
A splash of red appeared on his silk tie under the dim lights of a bar. I saw him reach for his white pocket square to take care of the stain.
He asked for a glass of water, a corner of the pocket square was moistened to do battle. I intervened as his hand was poised to rub.
I replaced my business card with his pocket square as I stopped him before he could do damage to his tie, which turned out to be Hermes. My bespoke English garment care firm, Jeeves of Belgravia would take on the task. Who better? As our London locations keep the future King of England spotless.
The Dry Cleaner’s advice; never rub a stain or add water to a garment that can’t be put into a washing machine. I have seen too many beautiful garments ruined by rubbing, club soda, water, salt, baby powder and hairspray. All “wives tales” to remove stains on the go.
If anything at all, just blot, and gently I might add.
If it’s washable go ahead and put in the machine sooner rather than later. If dry cleanable bring in and tell the person at the counter what the stain might be.
Last night’s tie? My driver is picking it up from my “new client” today.
Hermes Blouse
A relatively new client was at Cameo Cleaners last month with a problem. She had in her Bergdorf Goodman shopping bag what used to be a beautiful Hermes silk top.
She was upset, visibly upset. She had just walked over from the brand spanking new dry cleaner 2 blocks away. She confessed that she had brought her blouse to the new cleaner because, “they were on my way to work.” The blouse was a shadow of what it used to be.
The Hermes top was a textured silk, evoking light delicate petals of a peony in shades of charcoal and black. The top no longer fit my client, it was too large, the silk petals misshapen and haphazard. The luster of the silk was no longer there.
She handed me a letter written by the manager of the cleaner who had mishandled the cleaning of the blouse. It was filled with words such as, “manufactures fault”, “mislabeled” and “unserviceable”. All word that you don’t want to hear when you pick up your blouse at the dry cleaner. The word “sorry” never appeared in the letter.
After examination I knew what went wrong. The other dry cleaner had steamed out the blouse causing the texture silk to become flat. That’s why the blouse was too large and the petals misshapen. It also appeared that they had “washed” in an attempt to save the blouse.
There was no way of fixing this for her as it was too far gone. I told her that I would send it to my garment analysis lab for an independent opinion. The results concurred with my opinion.
This type of business person gives all dry cleaners a bad name. Instead of solving the problem for his client, he gave the problem back to the client. He lost an opportunity to create a “customer for life”, now she’s my client, and she has sent 3 friends to me,
In my company if we have an issue with a garment and feel that it’s the fault of the maker, we solve the problem with the maker. We never ask our client to do our work.
As Coco Chanel once said, “In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.”
My staff and I run a garment care companies that are different, and I hope my clients feel that we are irreplaceable.
Thanks for listening. Jerry Pozniak
True Story: Alcohol, Airplanes and the Dress
This is a true story that happened at Cameo Cleaners of Gramercy Park in 2008 in mid spring.
The call came in bright and early on Thursday. The shop manager at Cameo Cleaners of Gramercy Park came into my office and stated that she had a big problem. It seems that a bridesmaid dress was brought in on Monday, horribly stained and was needed for today. The dress wasn’t ready and the client was on the phone and she was hysterical.
The dress was in bad shape, the client had worn it the previous weekend to go out. The dress was supposed to be worn at her sister’s wedding; she was the maid-of-honor. A drink was spilled. The dress was stained. She was getting on a plane in 3 hours to travel to the wedding. She wanted the dress. She wanted it now. It was her sister’s wedding; she had to have the dress in 1 hour.
I explained our dilemma. We had called and spoke to her boyfriend the night before. He gave us the okay to re-clean the dress, “take your time”; he stated not really knowing the magnitude of those words. Now we were between a rock and a hard place. We have an upset client, a stained dress, a boyfriend in the middle and an impossible deadline.
I offered to have the dress shipped FEDEX. It would be in her hand first thing tomorrow morning. No dice. She wouldn’t accept anything less than the dress in her hands as she boarded the airplane.
I picked up the phone and called Charlie, one of my partners in the firm, to figure out how to solve this one.
A one hour deadline wouldn’t work, the dress was still in the cleaning machine and would not be out for 45 minutes, add transportation and you’re looking at an unhappy client, really unhappy.
Charlie made the suggestion of meeting her at the airport. “Find out where she’s flying out of”, he barked. My fingers hit speed dial. The client said, “JFK”, I knew we hit gold. JFK is 10 minutes from our production facility.
I asked the client what gate she was leaving from and quickly dispatched the info to Charlie. The dress came out of the machine without a trace of the evidence from last weekend. Charlie jumped into his car and broke a few traffic regulations but was at the gate in time.
The client left for her sister’s wedding, with a smile on her face and the dress in hand. Oh, and the dress was perfect.
How to Find a Good Dry Cleaner, “Stains.”
How can you judge the quality of the dry cleaning once you pick up your clothes? The first tell-tale sign would be if your clothes were not ready on time. If your order is running late, did the dry cleaner give you a call to let you know what was going on?
At my shops we give our clients a ring when we “need more time” to properly clean their garment. From time-to-time a garment may have stubborn stains that require additional time to remove. At my shops we don’t stop at one cleaning, if your garment requires intensive stain removal we do it. But we always find out if we can take the time to give you back your garments as “perfect as possible.”
It is not in your best interest to ask for “rush” or “same day service” when you have a badly stained garment. You may not be giving your dry cleaner enough time to make sure the stains are removed. Ask your dry cleaner how much time is needed and give them the time to do the job correctly.
The dry cleaning process itself does a great job of removing oil based stains, but does a poor job of removing just about everything else. Dry cleaning is a “dry” process because of the absence of water in the cleaning solution. The cleaning solution’s lack of water allows us to clean garments without risk of shrinkage, but water soluble stains (food, coffee, tea, blood, ink etc.) require additional treatment for removal.
What separates the true professional dry cleaner, from the guy with a machine and a sign, is the ability to remove difficult stains from fragile fabrics.
Proper stain removal requires both a technical knowledge of basic chemistry as well as the hands of a skilled artisan. Various stain removal solutions based on acids or alkalies are applied depending on the composition of the stain. Stains are “massaged” and “tamped” to facilitate removal. Steam and compressed air are used to flush out the last traces of the stain. One false move during this procedure and oops, you have a hole where the stain was.
Many discount dry cleaning firms cannot afford to hire an expert dry cleaning technician and may employ someone with limited skills. This is not the place to bring your stained Chloe top or Valentino suit. It’s too easy for an unskilled dry cleaning technician to “go to far” when attempting stain removal and end up damaging your garment.
Your dry cleaning shop should dispense “free advice” when it comes to stain removal. Not every stain can be removed from every garment, but a great dry cleaner should be able to let you know if there is a chance of stain removal.
This is where you can be a big help. If you recall what the stain might be please let your dry cleaner know. Not having to guess will help the dry cleaner start in the right direction.
Thanks for listening and I encourage your comments. Jerry Pozniak
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-10-18
- LA county is cleaning up, well attempting to clean up cussing. No #%$@ way! http://tinyurl.com/cvu2j4 #
- Have to bring a coat to the Metropolitan Opera for tonight's show. Despite the snow, the "show must go on!" #
- Need 5 more followers to hit 300, can I get a hand please??? #
- Got to 300, thanks for helping, now I need to get to 2,000. #
- A man gets arrested while stealing a car because while he was stealing the car he…. http://tinyurl.com/afdb5c #
- Sign this petition to have a victory garden at the White House…
http://www.eattheview.org/petition # - If your white clothes come back from the cleaner gray, find a new cleaner, they are not keeping their cleaning solution clean. #
- Good night tweeps and see you on #followfriday… #
- #ffollowfriday my friends @thekbuzz my buddy @jimmyfallon fashion icon @robertverdi celebrity gossip @celebclosets #
- #followfriday my friends @thekbuzz my buddy @jimmyfallon fashion icon @robertverdi celebrity gossip @celebclosets #
- Stressful day, client issues, button issues, need a beverage, need lunch, need a nap… #
- To everyone who followed me today, I will thank you personally later… I don't use auto DM, I like the personal touch. #
- If your garment has fragile buttons, have your dry cleaner remove them so they don't break. Mother-of-pearl and glass buttons are fragile. #
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How to Find a Good Dry Cleaner
If you live in NYC the chances are that you can’t go more than 2 blocks without encountering a dry cleaner. If you are fortunate the dry cleaner who is the closest may be good, but how can you tell? And what is good dry cleanig anyway?
If the dry cleaning shop looks like a disaster it probably is. I can never figure how people can drop of clothes and expect them to be cleaned in places that are filthy.
Speak to the counter staff, do they seem knowledgeable? If they aren’t, how comfortable are you going to be when you need to have a delicate garment cleaned?
Ask questions, ask around and see what kind of reputation they have. It’s probably not best to choose the cheapest dry cleaner around. As in everything in life, you generally get what you pay for.
Dry Cleaning 101
I guess the best place to start my blog should be at the beginning. What the heck happens then you leave your stuff off at the dry cleaners. How does it get clean.
It’s not magic and it’s really not a “dry” process. Your clothes are cleaned in a machine which looks like a huge front loading washing machine. The main difference, other than the size, is that water is not used to clean. In place of the water is a liquid cleaning solution (hence the dry, in dry cleaning) which does a great job of removing greases and oils but a terrible job of removing food stains.
Your clothes go into the machine dry, go through a “wash” cycle where detergents and conditioners are added, an extraction cycle and then a dry cycle. Because your clothes are cleaned in a cleaning solution the machine cannot be opened until all of the solution has been removed from your clothes.
Dry cleaning isn’t mysterious and almost anyone can open a dry cleaners. What seperates the true professionals from everyone else is all of the other steps that need to be taken in order to care for your garments correclty.
Fashion is not black & white and every black dress cannot be cleaned the same way. Stay tuned, and thanks for listening.
