Third generation dry cleaner here. I would recommend that you give any potential new dry cleaner a trial run with a cheap dress shirt and a suit you bought at the thrift store before you trust them with your bespoke wardrobe. Purposely put a food stain on the front of the shirt and don't even mention it when you drop it off. A good cleaner will see it and remove the stain or at the very least return it with a "Sorry, we tried" tag. A bad cleaner will return it with the stain or no sorry tag. The suit should come back with a plastic clip in front to hold the buttons in the right place and a hanger with a shoulder shroud between your suit and the wire. The better ones are plastic but cardboard works too. If you really want to test them drop the suit off with your own quality wooden hanger and request that the suit be returned on your hanger. Make sure you can identify your hanger on sight as not all wooden suit hangers are equals. Want to do an honesty test? Drop off a few shirts and leave the a cheap set of cuff links or a five dollar bill in the pocket. A good cleaner will return these to you. Drop of a shirt with a top button purposely cracked in half. A good cleaner will return your shirt with a new button at no extra charge. And keep in mind that no cleaner is legally liable to reimburse you the full sales price for an item that is damaged in the process. Used clothes are like used cars. Their market value is not what you originally paid. But if you are a regular good customer a good cleaner will offer a reasonable store credit to keep your business. I usually offer half what the customer paid and of course no charge for the botched job. It happens even to the best. And unfortunately the law of averages means the rare damage is likely to strike your best customers.
Mark DiChiara do you have a website? My area is a nightmare when it comes to dry cleaners and at this point I’m willing to ship them out if I can find a reputable cleaner.
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Brother!!! I know nothing about these things...you have dropped big bucket of knowledge at my feet right now. I am now smarter (and greatly encouraged) about many things after listening to this! 😅 I've had a closeted desire to learn more and eventually get into the dry cleaning business for the past 15 years. I suppose the way that I've expressed it over the past decade was through a low-key love of ironing clothes for my family over the years. It is at this point, after completing 5 years of seminary and 5 units of clinical pastoral education - of which I am extremely thankful for, that I decided to start ironing as a very small business. Now finding this channel proves to be very comforting for me as I am sure it is for others. What am I saying? Thank you for all of your efforts sir and carry on!
Sewist here. Silk can be colorfast. In fact I would expect a high quality tie to be that way. There are ways to set most dyes and inks in silk. Before I would give up on a tie I would try removing the stain and then wash it in a mild soap and cold water. What do you have to lose? I would then lay it flat to dry so that hopefully it would keep it's shape and not require pressing. Careful using steam or an iron on silk. Silk proteins are very sensitive to heat and can burn or become brittle.
I have never gone to the dry cleaners for a very long time already. I have learned to hand wash and hand press my expensive suits and delicate shirts. I know and am assured I have cleaner and fresher smelling clothes all the time.
The dry cleaners are getting hit really hard right now and a lot are struggling. Support your local dry cleaners right now, if you are able, we need it. ❤️
@@jenn7559 Shop around. I have an excellent Cleaner . Professional Work Good price. One of the best I've used in over 20 years. Word of mouth is best feed back for selection.
I’ve been a dry cleaner all of my adult life (18 yrs in the shop) and he is 100% correct..... except! DO NOT ‘pretreat’ your stains!!!! Let us do that! That makes it infinitely more difficult to remove stains. Great video!
Im thinking about opening a dry cleaner as one of my buisnesses, I have OCD and I think ill bring back the un-sewing of the back of ties to iron, I have a couple buisness ideas for ties to so you should see more convienence in them in the future.
The best country in the world for dry cleaning are the Gulf countries. Because everyone wears white ankle-length clothes and are very expensive silk and cotton, which have to look clean and they better do a great job. The other place is London UK where you can find cleaners like Blossom & Browne's Sycamore which have "by appointment to the Royal Family", etc. What we need in the US and Canada is something like that.
I was able to partially restore the volume of a necktie flattened by the dry cleaners, by spraying water mist / shower steamimg and gently ironing the flattened edges out.
Excellent video and excellent channel. But, dry cleaning a wool suit ... I think you mention to do it every year or two (and others also say this) ... even assuming no stains, or excessive sweat, this seems insufficient. Perhaps the climate has much more of an effect; much of Europe might see few days over 20-22 C, while the US can regularly see 30-32 C over the summer months ... and then there's humidity. Assuming 5 wool suits and a 50-week work year, each suit gets worn 50 times per year. This strikes me as quite a lot. 1. How much of a role does steaming the jacket and pants (at least the inside areas) play in preventing smells? I have this feeling that regular steaming before each wearing is a significant factor. 2. Will using an atomizer to spray denatured alcohol (90%) on certain inside areas (particularly of pants) help? I received this recommendation many years ago, and it seems to work for polyester blemds. 3. Do you have any advice for the newer machine washable suits? True, they're not nearly as nice as wool, but for every-day office wear (out on the floor, not the executive areas), they seem acceptable.
To Douglas Arbalist, That has been my concern as well. I've recently gotten into making suits and I'm concerned more about smells than stains or dust. Most sites I've found seem to neglect this. Where I live, the temperature can range from -20*C in the winter to >35*C (plus humidity) for most of the summer. Finding fabrics to accommodate these extreme temperatures that can also be cleaned has been quite the task. Have you come across any other means of regularly getting smells out of wool suits that won't destroy the fabric? Did the means you mentioned work out for you? All the best, Kyle
For me liquid ammonia and petrol clean every stain, even those I got hand me down and had been stained for years. I haven't noticed any fabric damage yet. I use it on dry clothes and let it rest with a tissue I put the liquid on, then wash it with regular water, or if it can be washed with detergent, I do that. After that I use ironing or steaming.
Could you explain the brushing for suits? Also I brought a decent $100 suit supply Egyptian cotton dress shirt to the local dry cleaner and they gave me back my shirt looking like it got pressed into a ball. It was horribly deeply wrinkled, but they didn't care when confronted. What do you do when a item comes back like this and looks worse than when you brought it? I was angry and they didn't care.
Basically store policy would dictate what would be done. As for things to do not much besides different cleaner or doing your shirts yourself except leaving a bad review online and not recommending them. To answer your first question google how to use a clothes brush and I can recommend the method found on thebutlerscloset. The same information is also found in "The Butler's Guide to Clothes Care, Managing the Table, Running the Home & Other Graces" by Stanley Ager
For the sweat/deodorant stains there are many options. Here are a couple; mix a 1/4 cup household ammonia with a 1/4 cup water, daub on stain, let stand for an hour, then launder. DO NOT MIX AMMONIA WITH OTHER CLEANERS. Mix 4 Tbs. baking soda with 1/4 cup warm water , rub paste into stain, let stand for around 2 hours, after rub a few drops of laundry detergent into stain, then launder. Should also work well for ring around the collar. Use oxygen bleach, NOT chlorine bleach, to make mix equal parts soda ash aka washing soda with 3% hydrogen peroxide. To use dissolve 2 Tbs. oxygen bleach with 1 cup hot water, add 1 Tsp. of detergent to the solution, rub into stain, let stand for 2 hour out of direct sunlight, then launder. Dirt stains are considerably easier to deal with. Commercial stain pre-treats work, you can treat the stain with laundry detergent or dish soap, another option would be a paste made from borax or baking soda. Besides that I can't think of anything. As for how to avoid these stains an under shirt should help with sweat, the dirt though I am not sure since I don't know what causes it.
@@evanator166 Thanks for the advice on getting out stains. It's been interesting reading through the tips from various people here in the comment section. Do you have any suggestions for dealing with odors accumulated from repeated wear in wool garments, such as trousers or suits? I'm hoping to try making one soon, but we get very hot and humid summers here. All the best!
Get video very informative ! I got a couple questions, #1 At the risk of sounding too "red neck" I wear boots every day with my suits, however what I call boots are boots (American cowboy boots) not high top dress shoes. Have I been breaking all the rules ? to my defense they are polished. #2 Maybe a little off point but what is the name and artist that is playing during opening and closing of your videos?
Tip anyone that you want quality service from. Some examples are delivery drivers, waiters, etc. Im a delivery driver and im always sure to be extra nice when a customer tips ahead of time, or it's a reoccuring customer that always tips.
DJ Astro Studios Woolite makes an at home dry cleaning kit that has worked well for me. You can find them on amazon for around 10-15 bucks. It's basically a glorified dryer sheet, but actually does a great job at removing light stains in my opinion.
Different stains require different products. Without going into the when and how here are some recommendations for spot cleaning. Fuller's earth, water, mild clear liquid dish soap, denatured alcohol, oil solvents (K2R ect.), white vinegar, and glycerin. As an aside remember how Sven said petroleum based solvents were used for dry cleaning? Stoddard solvent was originally used for dry cleaning and became a quite popular less flammable option. Interestingly it was also a former active ingredient in Fels Naptha. You might better know Stoddard solvent by the name mineral spirits, which it is a derivative of. I know mineral spirits work well against grease, wax, and probably oils but besides that I really don't know what it would be good for but it is something to ponder.
Im only watching this because at my job they gave me a NASA DM-2 Launch America On-Air Jacket, cause of the launch event and sadly it says you can pnly clean it with dry cleaning only :c it also came with some wrinkles so idk if its supposed to be like that or if you could press it idk tbh
This is why I don't like wearing suits. It's such a palaver. But I kinda don't have a choice if I'm going to a job interview or if I end up working somewhere whereby I have to wear a suit all the time...
I just bought a brand new Burberry trench coat but I don’t know how to clean it. Is it best to dry clean it or hand wash it? There’s leather buckles on it so I’m not sure really what to do.
I only have two suits, so I constantly wear he same suit several times a week. I want to protect my garments, but I also want to remove any dirt, sweat stains and other bacteria that were left on my suit. How often should I dry clean my clothes? I usually dry clean once a week.
I would say that dry cleaning once a week is too much and it will ruin your clothes on a longer run. I think as a rule, that you should only dry clean your suits when they actually needs to be cleaned, which shouldn't be more than maybe once a month, maybe even less. Otherwise maintain them with a brush and use undershirts (you can find undershirts with extra padding for sweat issues on amazon for instance) to both protect your shirts and suits from sweat etc. Anybody who has some other thoughts on this?
If you see this comment I could use some advice on a product I used tohave but it's now illegal. In lo don UK in the 80s we were encouraged to buy a tiny glass bottle of expensive filth eating liquid gold! You'd pour a bit into the cap, dip dirty sable ,akeupbrush, s2irlit around on paper how I and off you go! I miss this contraband invaluable energy saving miracle in a bottle. Theatre makeup stores used to carry it! My question is 1st have you heard of such a thing? 2nd- what is comparable that's easy to get my hands on?
My mum took my whitest of white hoodies to the dry cleaner's and, well, it came back light pink... dunno if it's the cotton fabric or the tommy lettering (tho it's blue lol) but 🤷
Well... where i live there are like 1 dry cleaner. And i live in a 69000 people city and that’s large for my country. I perhaps have to drive like 100+km to find another.... it also very expensive. We don’t have many dry cleaners to go to here. 😕
Hi Raphael, I know this comment is unrelated to the video, but I ask it here because you are most likely to respond. In the quality hallmarks of a shirt you said that a quality shirt should have one layer of single VISIBLE stiching. I want you to elaborate because I saw a shirt I like in the store that has one visible layer of stiching on the outside and one on the inside, witch is not visible outside, is it a quality garment or not ?
I got a few shirts with those types of collars from Amazon. One brand was jack martin and the other was John clothier, both of these I believe came from England. Nice cotton fabric. Take your measurements as the sizing can be a bit off from US sizing. Hope this helps-good luck!
Mr. Raphael: I beg to differ as to your comment that there are no dry cleaners which offer the service of undoing the seam of the tie...cleaning it and reassembling. ...and that such service has not been available since the '20's. Wrong, sir. On the contrary...yes...there dry cleaners which offer this service...in N. Y., Boston, London, Naples, Edinburgh.....etc.
You need to bring your dress shirts to the dry cleaner? Aren’t they machine washable? I machine wash my dress shirts at home after every wear and they are great so far. Is it the right way to do it? Thank you for the advice.
Dry cleaner here. Most of your shirts can be laundered. Common fibers like Polyester/cotton, even rayon can be laundered. Finishing the garme may be a problem, but if you can press them yourself, go ahead. Most people just send them to us, because it's like 2 bucks and saves time. For fancier dress shirts that contain silk or colorful designs in the collar/cuff should be dry cleaned or at least laundered and pressed by hand. The shirt machine presses the shirts wet. Which can cause collars and cuffs to bleed. I've seen a few shirts get ruined like this when customers have refused to get them dry cleaned. Now your shirt is ruined because you didn't want to pay 2 more dollars to have them hand pressed. A lot of times if I see this I just press it by hand anyways, but that's a loss on us.
Raphael, I have a question: I have a vintage Aquascutum trenchcoat which needs re-proofing. Do you think I'm better off taking it to a dry cleaners or reproofing it myself? People have had some pretty poor results from taking them to dry cleaners in terms of the proofing lasting, so I have no idea what to do now! I'm loving those vintage oxfords, BTW!
Hi Raphael, thanks again for the video!! I have an old sport coat, small grey squares with small white checks, wool/silk blend, that has never been worn (with tags) but has discolored (slightly yellow) on the shoulders due to the age. Can dry cleaning brighten the coat? Internet also says diluted vinegar can whiten the yellowing; any thoughts? Thanks!
The constant snare drum starts to get annoying starting at 7:23 when the cadence of the host's voice lines up with it. I think it might be better to fade out the snare drum about 1/4 of the way in and fade it back in the last quarter of the video. This will keep it classy without overdoing anything distracting. I am a sample size of 1, though. I might be wrong.
nice video, thanks for the great information you always share with us. just a quick question, did the suit had one vent, two vents or no vent and if no vent why made you make that choice?
I enjoyed watching your video I have been for 21 years stim iron a laundry shop is running I.d like to go Germany give you a laundry shop if you can holp
some of the info is not true, I'm a depot and the way we work with the plant we provide highest level of service. my store has the highest rating and i received a certificate for being number 1 in my city. it alldependson who runs the depot and how much knowledge you have.
In other words spend $235 on a tie and get ready to throw it out the next day 😂. Right now I am searching for a museum cleaner and in the state I live in I doubt it exists.
Does anyone know any cleaners in the states that will accept items sent from out of state. I’m down to one possible hope for finding a decent cleaner in my area. I’ve had too many garments DESTROYED. I know other people don’t care but when you take your new shirt or sport coat to a cleaner and find it with sheen on the first day it’s very frustrating because you don’t want to take back anything.
Most dry cleaners don’t pay their employees enough to care about your garments so go only if you have to. As well is the carcinogenic nature of perchlorolethylene. Hydrocarbon is probably better for you and the environment but do your best to find a cleaner that uses liquid silicone, as it is best for the health of both yourself and the earth (as far as we know). Every dry cleaner I’ve worked at has offered a hand pressing service, which you’ll want to get if you care about your collars being straight. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to fix collars and cuffs before packaging shirts. Read your care labels too. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people pay $7-$8 dollars to have their plain-Jane cotton pants cleaned and pressed. And don’t cut your care labels out, because they’re important.
Yes, it is amazing what people will do if your a regular and tip well. This applies to everyone from barbers and wait staff to Uber drivers and dry cleaners. Also if you ever find yourself at an all inclusive resort please, please tip. Not nearly enough people do.
No it doesn't. It just slows the growth of bacteria. The bacteria is still there. To actually get rid of the bacteria you still need to go to the dry cleaners.
A good dry cleaner depends on a customer bringing in quality garments and on time. If I spray paint my car, take it through the sand storms and salt roads, then expect the car was to return a shiny new car to me, I am fooling myself. Care for your garments. Pay a reasonable price for someone cleaning your clothes, you get what you pay for. $1000 suit, you should pay $25-50 to clean it. $100 suit, $10 max. Shirts are the window into the quality of the cleaner. They do a good shirt, everything else will be good.
Agree! It's a two way street. The faster we get the garment, the faster we can work on the stain before it sets. Some stains set faster depending on fabric and what caused the stain. But most people wear it, put it back in the closet, and get it cleaned next time they wear it. And surprised there's a stain, that's been sitting there for months or a year... We will do everything we can, but u can't expect a miracle from us when you don't take your part in taking care of your garments. OH and people bringing in suits that have been in a box for 10 years, wrinkled all set in, and expect a brand new suit..
Excuse me, Sir, that's not an African American leader. That's Sir Paul Bogle a Jamaican National Hero who was a leader an activist who fought for injustice against the British in the 1800s
Agree! I found myself watching these vids after buying 2 suits for my 16 year old son who has to wear business suits in his sixth form. We don't have much money, and I managed to get these suits after months of saving...I also managed to find several silk designer ties in a local Oxfam !! So, i took one of my son's suits to the dry cleaners because I want these suits to look good and last. I was so disappointed when I collected it. Not only did it seem to have not been cleaned but it also seems to have become easier to crease. The fabric has lost it's firmness and structure. I'm so annoyed as this cleaner has good reviews. I watched another vid on this channel showing how to wash suits at home and to be honest I think I would have had better results washing it myself...oh well, lesson learned I suppose.
They use that in the colleges in the US. A course marked as 101 is usually an introductory course which deals with the basic or the overall concepts of a specific topic.
Patrick Pang ...no a good wool suit ,spot clean , light hand steam, air it out , never wear two days in a row , cool iron with cotton cloth to fix seat lines on pants. Buy pant hangers
I don't buy any clothes that I can't soak in the bath and hang on the line! The best hand ironing service and cheapest is to marry a right moose, if it cooks as well your quids in!
