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A new client stopped by last week. In one hand he clutched some
drycleaning and shirt laundry. In the other he held a single shirt
in its original poly bag.
He explained that he's been referred to me by his personal
clothier and asked me to critique the shirt in the bag.
The first thing I saw was the invoice: "1 shirt premium hand
ironed $7.05"
Opening the bag I found a blue Ike Behar cotton dress shirt with
the cuffs clipped together in the front with a clear plastic clip.
I surmised that the "premium" on the invoice must relate to the Ike
Behar brand label. I wondered if that same cleaner would categorize
Attolini, Borrelli, Brioni, Chavet, Kiton, Lorenzini, Staffano
Ricci or Zegna as "super dooper premium"? But I digress.
Next I studied the pressing. What I found was a shirt that had
all the telltale signs of a machine pressed shirt: puckered seams;
wrinkled collars, cuffs, underarms, sleeve pleats, sleeve plackets
and front plackets; and wrinkled cuff/sleeve and sleeve/body joins.
As well as small sharp creases (about 1/4" in length) that were
pressed into the shirt by a shirt pressing machine.
A hand pressed shirt? Not a chance in hell. Machine
pressed all the way. With a little hand touchup in the
underarm area in a failed attempt to remove the more obvious signs
that the shirt was machine pressed. No better than a $2.00
or $2.50 laundered shirt at any ordinary cleaner.
So when a cleaner - even a so-called "high-end cleaner" - tells
you that they routinely hand press all their laundered shirt, ask
the question again. If you get the same response, ask to see "a
hand pressed laundered shirt" right off their conveyor (see my
previous post,
Your Shirt Laundry Bill of Rights).
How can I help you?
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