“Sing me no song! Read me no rhyme! Don’t waste my time, Show me!” sings Eliza Doolittle in the musical My Fair Lady.

Recent Classic Cleaners blog posts have featured MuseumCare™, our wedding dress preservation system, guaranteed by all members of the worldwide Association of Wedding Gown Specialists.

Summerlot dress before restoring

While we love singing songs and reading rhymes, in today’s blog post we’re going to show

Summerlot dress after restoration

and tell you about the very special linen and lace wedding dress brought in to Classic Cleaners by customer Virginia Summerlot. Virginia’s daughter, a California resident, is getting married next year and plans to wear her mother’s 47-year old restored gown, matching gloves, train, and all. This promises to be a wedding story with not one, but two happy endings! (Who knows? With proper care and preservation, there might be more encore performances in store for this gorgeous garment!)

The special hand cleaning and preservation treatment system used on the Summerlot gown was showcased by Classic Cleaners at the

Classic Cleaners' Booth at the Scottish Rite Bridal Fair

bridal display at the Scottish Rite Cathedral on January 8th and 9th of this year. Our table features awards, photos, and the acid-free, archival quality wedding dress box we use for heirloom preservation.

Sing you no songs, you say?  Read you no rhymes?  Any time, we’ll show you!

By Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

“The Terrible Twos are a phenomenon most parents could quite happily live without,” says suite101.com, referring to toddlers who say “No!” to everything and make throwing temper tantrums a habit, beginning around their twentieth month of life.

At Classic Cleaners, we only occasionally experience the results of Terrible Twos toddlers’ behavior in the form of some of horribly stained and ripped clothing coming in with Fluff and Fold family laundry orders (one can only imagine the tantrums!).

As members of the Association of Wedding Gown Specialists, what we are trained to look for are the “Terrible Threes”.  Just as the “terrible two” toddlers stretch parents’ patience and wreak havoc on toddler wardrobes, when it comes to the terrible threes – sugars, salts, and acids – these wreak havoc on wedding gowns, doing the kind of damage with which conventional dry cleaning simply cannot cope.

Wedding dresses with lace appliqué, beading, and trim are most vulnerable to theTerrible Threes, which accumulate near the borders of the trim or beading.  Left untreated – or treated using only traditional dry cleaning methods – the at first invisible sugars, salts, and acids turn into ugly brownish-yellow areas on the dress.

The MuseumCare™ system of wedding gown preservation used at Classic Cleaners was shown to be the cleanest and safest in a blind test of four nationally-known wedding gown preservation processes. In fact, Classic Cleaners is the only dry cleaners in its area endorsed by the Association of Wedding Gown Specialists.

Whew!  With the beautiful wedding gown having been given the proper care and then preserved in an archival-quality box, the Terrible Threes will be safely out of the way.  As they begin their family, the bride and groom can spend their next few years preparing for the Terrible Twos!

By Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

20% off Alterations* January 23 – February 12

“People come in different sizes, and they change shape with age,” says Jolly Timberlake  in Uber Articles, stating the rather unpleasant obvious.

Timberlake adds an important and not-always-obvious note: “Alteration is the job of a specialist, as it requires refitting of a completed garment in a way that it doesn’t look or feel awkward.” “Our clothes are very important to us,” adds Satyan7 of hubpages.com. “We want them to fit properly.”

“You bet,” say the professionals at Classic Cleaners. “You’ve entrusted your clothes to us to keep them fresh, clean, and properly pressed – we want to be sure they fit well, too.” The most “fitting” time will be (drum roll)…the next two and half weeks with the Classic Cleaners’ limited time offer of 20% off alterations.

Coming up on nineteen years as Manager of Alterations, Ohi Suhre invites clients to take advantage of the complete Classic Cleaners **.  Most dry cleaners provide only limited services such as repairing tear, replacing buttons, fasteners, and zippers, or patching elbows.  At Classic Cleaners, Suhre explains, you can have garments let out, taken in, and re-tailored, including even pants, leather jackets, tuxedos, and heirloom clothing.

Psst…has your shape changed with age?  Don’t worry – we’ll never tell and no one will ever know after your expert clothing makeover by Classic Cleaners!

Classic Cleaners Alterations Manager Ohi Suhre

alterations services

* dry cleaning charges may apply
** for fittings, it is best to come to the Bash St. main store

By Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

Classic Cleaners’ newest service of boot cleaning and freshening came about because of the popularity of sheepskin  boots, including the designer boot line UGG®.   As we explained the other day in this blog, while dry cleaners don’t typically get involved with footwear, we wanted our foot-fashion conscious customers to feel clean and fresh when it comes to their boots as well as their clothes. 

sheepskin boots

It’s important to note that our boot service applies to all brands of tanned sheepskin boots, since we know many customers have chosen Ugg look-alikes made by other companies.  And, of course, that’s fine with us – so long as the care label gives the proper instructions.

Remember the old saying about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery? That’s all well and good, but when other manufacturers put an UGG label on their knockoff products, the makers of UGG® boots are more angry than flattered. “Our goal is to help our customers be aware of counterfeit footwear that is being sold to unsuspecting buyers as genuine UGG® Products.”

Reasons for the strong feelings expressed on uggaustralia.com include:

• Counterfeiting is illegal.
• Counterfeiting costs the economy an estimated $600 billion of revenue a year.
• Counterfeiters do not pay taxes nor provide fair wages or benefits to their employees.
• Counterfeiters are not accountable to human rights and environmental regulations.

Our Classic Cleaners customers tell us that their Ugg boots are a welcome relief from high heels, but at least one doctor says that the lesser quality versions of Uggs are hurting girls’ and young women’s feet.  Dr. Ian Drysdale, head of the British College of Osteopathic Medicine, told the Daily Mail that the knockoff boots lack the reinforced heels and insoles of genuine UGG®s. “With each step, the force falls towards the inside of the foot…that flattens the arch and makes it drop.”

“Saving one’s sole comes with a price,” quips stylist.com,” referring to the price of the real-deal UGG® boots. Whatever your choice of sheepskin boot, yours need never be cause for embarrassment or discomfort.  Think “Aahh”, never “Ugh!” when it comes to your boots with Classic Cleaners new boot-freshening treatment!

by Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team