Yellowing is a big dry cleaning challenge, no doubt about it.  And I don’t mean just a yellow spot, but when an entire section of a garment or even the entire thing, has turned from white to a sickly shade of yellow.

To be sure, Classic Cleaners’ professionals have been able to chalk up some major successes in the battle against yellowing.  Blog readers may recall Regina Mattson’s wedding blanket, the pair of lace wedding shoes, and Brooke Hynds Mackin’s 62-year old, third generation wedding gown.

According to fibre2fashion.com, “yellowing of textile fabrics is one of the oldest and most widespread quality problems known.”…”As a general statement, yellowing…is an indication of unintended chemical degradation.” Fibre2fashion lists several factors that can cause fabrics to yellow:

• Exposure to excessive heat and light (sunlight or fluorescent light)
•  Chemical additives in softeners or brightening agents
• Contaminants from boxes or bags (we wrote about the importance of acid-free containers just the other day)
• Perfumes and body lotions
• High humidity

Some of the time, in fact most times, our experienced technicians have won the battle against yellowing on garments and linens. There have been times, though, when garment are just too far gone for us to restore. (Almost always, though, when you bring in a garment for a consultation, we can predict how well it’s likely to turn out.) 

From a treasured garment’s point of view, it’s just not easy being yellow!

by Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

Put metal edges next to clothing and what do you get? Snags.

At Classic Cleaners, we see snags of every sort.  Sometimes, a wood splinter or a broken fingernail is the culprit, but more typically, garment snags are the result of metal things that go “pinch” or “pull”.

When the prongs on jewelry are loose, not only can precious stones be lost, those loose prongs can be very bad news for clothes.  Quick! Take your ring to your jeweler, while your dry cleaning professionals make the needed repairs to your garment.

Ladies, even your not-so-precious costume jewelry, especially if it hangs below the neckline, can snag your clothing.  Earrings that dangle can cause amazing damage as clothing is pulled over the head. Gentlemen’s and ladies’ belts can include metal edging or clasps that go “pinch” and “snag”.

The jury is still out on cell phone use being bad for human health. For sure, though, cell phones can be bad for clothing: the clips on belt cell phone holders often cause snags in the waistbands of skirts and trousers. Pin-on – and clip-on – name badges at business meetings? Those can snag woven fabrics of tops and sweaters.

Metal hoops in Civil War-era dresses

Repairing fabric tears is just one of the services Classic Cleaners provides, along with patching jacket elbows, replacing buttons, fasteners, and zippers, and hemming dresses, skirts, and pants.  With our decades of combined experience, you can bet those fasteners and zippers no longer go “pinch” in the night – or in the day, for that matter! 

 by Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

Thread Count Counts at Classic Cleaners!

If you learn nothing else about suits, askmen.com wants to be sure you learn about thread count.

  The higher the thread count, the finer the weave and delicacy of the wool fabric – a count higher than 300 signifies a fine fabric. Closer to 180, though, may mean your suit is “tougher” and that the fabric might hold up longer.

Askmen.com was talking about all-wool suits, but quite often, the business suits turned in for dry cleaning at our Indianapolis, Westfield, and Carmel Classic Cleaners locations are made of a blended fabric. Sometimes suits contain a blend of natural and man-made fibers. The care label will offer a recommendation for method of cleaning that is based partially on the fabric blend.

It’s interesting.  We generally mistrust the statement “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you”, but, as an Ohio State University Extension Fact Sheet on textile sciences explains, most consumers consider care labels a desirable form of government regulation. At Classic Cleaners, our professionals begin by deciphering the label on each garment, and then proceed to study each stain. 

With decades of combined experience, the Classic Cleaners team has assembled an arsenal of tools and techniques. Thread count matters, because the finer the weave, the more delicately the suit fabric must be treated.

Thread count matters on bed linens and tablecloths as well. But, as one eBay Guide explains, there are other factors to be considered as well, such as the quality of the yarn itself, the construction, and the finishing.

Whatever the thread count of your suits or linens, you may be sure no thread will be left unraveled as Classic Cleaners treats your fabrics to professional care!

While Classic Cleaners’ General Manager Steve Arnold and the other 24 members of the 4th Virginia Company were cooking wild turkey at Conner Prairie Village’s civil war re-enactment last month, Arnold realized, their vintage uniforms were absorbing the smell of the campfire.

Interesting.  Although Classic Cleaners has earned a reputation for expert stain removal, it’s often true today that garments with no stains still need dry cleaning in order to remove smells.

Back in Civil War times, clothes were left out in the open air to get deodorized.  Today, Classic Cleaners’ technicians use an ozone-making machine the size of a small space heater. Clothes are exposed to the ozone within a closed-off room.  Just a few minutes with the ozone machine equals the effect of a couple of weeks leaving clothes to air outside!

Classic Cleaners Partner Steve Arnold at 4th Virginia Company

Clothing in Civil War times was made to last for many years.  Battlefield soldiers often didn’t have the luxury of owning several changes of clothes (average monthly pay was $11!).  Still, the hand-brushing soldiers used to restore the “nap” to fabrics is still used as one of several garment hand-care techniques at Classic Cleaners today.

You may not be in the habit of cooking wild turkey over a campfire, but clothing absorbs odors from many sources, and clothing needs periodic professional deodorizing.

When Classic Cleaners returns your garments to you at the counter or at your home, you may be assured those garments are not only clean and pressed – they can pass the smell test!

by Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

It seems like only yesterday that Delores Godwin left her position as RCA group manager to manage the Classic Cleaners store on 62nd and Allisonville Road.  Thankfully, the rest isn’t history, because, 22 1/2 years later, Dee’s still very much an important member of the Classic Cleaners management team.

Now district manager at Classic Cleaners, Dee is greeted with hugs when she stands

Dee Godwin smiles for customers, not for spots!

in at the counter at any of the eight district stores and is spotted by longtime customers. Biggest change in the business she’s noticed over the years?  The new fabric blends.  (In Dee’s early years at Classic Cleaners, most of the clothing was pure wool, silk, or cotton.) One thing that has not changed at all in Dee’s world – the importance of customer service.  “Be friendly, outgoing, and let your customers know you really care about them and their clothes,” Dee teaches new employees.

Asked to identify her favorite aspect of working for a dry cleaners, Dee immediately mentioned stain removal.  “It’s like being a detective.  You don’t always know what the stain is, and you’ve got to use clues, then try the right combination of chemicals and techniques to get that stain out.”

Dee recalls her very first day on the job, when Classic Cleaners’ founding partner Carl Arnold called her attention to something at the back of a machine which he was illuminating with a flashlight.  “Do you see that?” he asked.  “Will you tell me what I’m looking for?” she replied.  Inside the machine, Carl pointed out, was cleaning solution that needed to be “cooked down” to take out dyes and oils and impurities so that the solution could be reused.  Carl was teaching Dee to recognize what level in the machine the solution needed to reach so she’d know it had been fully purified. That lesson would be useful to her for the next twenty two and a half years!

Dee resides with her husband of 46 years, James Godwin (now retired from the former Allied Grocers), and with their two female Jack Russell terriers, P.J. and Peety-Boo. Meanwhile, at work, Dee helps carry on the company’s culture of customer service that helped earn the Classic Cleaners’ “ Best Dry Cleaner in Indy” rating.

The famous Lady Macbeth line from Shakespeare is “Out, Out, Damned Spot!”. But, unlike the evil Lady Macbeth, Dee Godwin is interested in doing her very best to serve Classic Cleaners’ customers!

by Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

“Shorts are a garment worn by both men and women over their pelvic area, covering the upper part of the legs,” begins a Wikipedia write-up. “They are called ‘shorts‘ because they are a shortened version of trousers, which cover the entire leg.”

Yes, we know. 

the long and the short of - shorts!

IN FACT, THE JUNE MONTHLY SPECIAL AT CLASSIC CLEANERS
IS $3.00 OFF EACH PAIR OF SHORTS!

Shorts styles have changed over the many years our Classic Cleaners technicians have been taking care of clients’ clothes.  Whatever type of shorts you can name – you can bet we’ve cleaned or laundered shorts just like those. (At Classic Cleaners, we check the care label instructions on each garment to see if your shorts belong with your fluff-and-fold laundry order or should be dry cleaned.)
 
Cargo shorts? You bet our professional dry cleaners in Broad Ripple have handled those!.  (Cargo shorts have numerous pockets – don’t forget to search the pockets before turning them over to be dry cleaned or professionally laundered and pressed.)

Bike shorts? Check.  (Originally worn by cyclists to reduce thigh chafing, bike shorts have been adopted as street wear for women under tops or under skirts, our dry cleaners in Carmel. see quite a number of these.)

Jeans shorts? Of course.  (Made out of denim,  jeans shorts may also be called “jorts”. Jeans shorts are popular with both men and women, our Indianapolis dry cleaning technicians report.)

Board shorts? Even those.  (Board shorts were originally designed for surf boarders, but men often wear this easy-going combination of shorts and a bathing suit. Our Classic Cleaners pickup route in Cicero often brings in board shorts.)

Zip-offs? Yes.  (Zip-off shorts are long pants that zip off at the knee, so the wearer can go from pants to shorts and back as the weather changes.)

Flood pants? My, yes.  (These go down as far as the calf, so they’re sometimes called “shants”.)
 
Skorts? Rarely, but yes. (These shorts have a piece of fabric in front that makes them look like a skirt.  The style shows up at our Carmel dry cleaners location every so often.).  

From creased khaki shorts to plaid golf shorts and everything in between, the long and the short of it is this:

When it comes to shorts, at Classic Cleaners, we’ve seen ‘em all!

by Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

The debate rages on.

Lockers - Classic Cleaners', not Davey Jones'!

Linguists and historians can’t seem to agree on the origins of the expression “Davey Jones’ Locker”

(referring to the bottom of the sea where drowned sailors go).

Meanwhile, there’s no debating the fact that Indy’s best dry cleaners has installed drop-off   (These lockers are very dry and definitely above ground!)

lockers in a dozen of its retail locations.

The first mention of Davey Jones was in a book, published in 1751, called The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle. “This same Davy Jones, according to sailors, is the fiend that presides over all the evil spirits of the deep,” wrote author Tobias Smollett.

A second theory is that “Davey” equals “Duffy”, the West Indiana term for ghost, and that “Jones” stands for “Jonah”, whom God punished by causing him to be swallowed by a whale.

There’s more.  A 1594 song called “Jones’ Ale is Newe” told of a pub owner who threw drunken sailors into his ale locker and then dumped the lockers onto passing ships.

I can assure you – at Classic Cleaners, lockers are used for convenience, not punishment.  Our lockers are for holding clothes, not ale or sailors!)

Working late? Just returned from vacation? It’s so convenient to drop off your personalized express dry cleaning bag in the secure chute.  We do the rest.  Then, once your clothes are ready for pickup, we store them in a locker accessible by your personalized PIN.

Next time you visit us at Classic Cleaners, tell the manager you’re ready to sign up for your very own locker services.

You can hear the Davey Jones name right in the U.S. Navy song, Anchors Aweigh. “Sail on to victory, and sink their bones to Davey Jones, hooray!”, the words go.

At Classic Cleaners, we won’t be sinking anybody’s bones. Every so often, though, after seeing how beautifully a problem garment turned out under Classic Cleaners specialists’ expert care, customers do let out a “Hooray” or two!

by Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

Commenting about mistakes, well-known author and sales trainer Zig Ziglar had this advice: “Some of us learn from other people’s mistakes.  The rest of us have to BE other people!”Of course we know everyone makes mistakes. But since the professionals at Classic Cleaners work hard to remain the best dry cleaners in Indy, we don’t want our customers to be making garment care mistakes other people learn from!

Deteriorated wedding gown

Knowing that wedding gown restoration is a specialty at Classic Cleaners, a customer brought us a dress in hopes it could be restored.  Unfortunately, too much time had passed; too much damage had been done. As you can see from the photo, the sleeves of the dress had already deteriorated and were starting to come apart.  Mildew had rotted the front area of the garment. We needed to break the bad news to the owner that, while it was possible that the original color of her dress might be restored, the fabric would not hold up under  total stain removal treatment.

What “O.P.M.” lessons can be learned from her story?
 
Never put away a garment with stains (even if you suspect something might have been spilled on it).

Exposure to any of these can set the stains in and cause deterioration of the fabric:

• The warmth of a closet or car trunk (especially when the garment is in a plastic bag!)
• Light
• The atmosphere
• Insects
• Heat
• The wrong combination of chemicals
• Rubbing

Always tell your dry cleaning professional if there has been a spill, even if there’s no sign of a stain. The longer you wait, the less likely you are to recall the important information your dry cleaner needs to treat your garment.

While the wedding gown could not be fully restored for wear, the technicians at Classic Cleaners were able to gently clean the gown and preserve it in one of our archival wedding gown boxes.

(See, Zig?  We’re offering our Classic Cleaners customers every O.P.M. opportunity to learn about garment care  the easy way!)

Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

In the famous Edgar Allen Poe short story, The Telltale Heart, the murderer was convinced he’d covered his tracks.  “There was nothing to wash out – no stain of any kind,” he’d told himself.

Have you ever spilled something and had the stain disappear, leaving no sign of champagne, soda, or food? 

Telltale Stains Too Late To Fix

Weeks or even months or years later, a yellow or brown stain magically appears at the very spot of the original spill. How did that happen?

At Classic Cleaners, we see many such unwelcome “encore appearances” of stains.  Clear alcoholic beverages often don’t appear to have done any damage at the time they’re spilled on a dress, jacket, or trousers.  But, stealthy as ”telltale hearts”, back come the telltale signs of  past spills of tea, coffee, soda, or champagne, white wine, or fruit juice.

Speaking of fruit, you’ve seen a peeled apple turn brown. No real mystery,  just science – the brownish color is a result of the sugar in the fruit oxidizing or “carmelizing” when it’s exposed to air.

The problem with carmelizing on clothes, though, is that time and heat help set in those reappeared stains, and the more time that passes, and the more heat there is, the harder it becomes to ever get those stains out of the fabric.

Spills happen on the happiest of occasions.  But for there to be a happy ending to your Telltale Stain story, remember these three rules:

• Blot – don’t rub! – the stain when the spill happens.
• Even if you see no signs of the spill on your garment, as soon as possible, bring it in for dry cleaning!
• Tell all!  Make sure your dry cleaning professionals know exactly what happened.  That way, the stain can be pre-treated before the garment is exposed to any heat in the dry cleaning process.

The murderer thought he’d gotten away with the crime, but the Telltale Heart “reappeared”, revealing the terrible truth.

That’s why Classic Cleaners’ word to the wise is:

If YOU don’t tell the truth about your stains, your stains will tell the story for you.  And, by then, it might be too late to restore your special garment!

Blame the manufacturer....

The WXNT announcer is careful to explain that the opinions of Indianapolis radio talk show host Abdul Hakkim Shabazz are his own, not necessarily those of the station or its owners.  So, concludes the disclaimer, “Don’t call us….call HIM!”

Kimberly Fusaro, writing in WomansDay.com, remarks that dry cleaners across the country would often like to tell their customers “Don’t call us…call the manufacturer!”  That’s because many of the problems that arise during the dry cleaning process were the fault of the clothing manufacturer, not the fault of the dry cleaner.

Here are just a few examples that we see with garments brought into Classic Cleaners stores:

• Puckering of collars and cuffs, or linings that hang below the hem of the garment. These problems are caused when the interfacing shrinks, because the manufacturer didn’t select an interfacing compatible with the garment fabric.
• Shirt buttons that crack during pressing. Often this happens because a manufacturer used lesser-quality buttons. (At Classic Cleaners, we replace chipped or cracked buttons.
• Colors that bleed into each other.  The FTC Label Rule dictates that all components of a garment must be able to withstand the recommended care procedure. 

According to Federal Trade Commission rules, if a garment’s label says “dry clean”, ALL parts of the garment must not become altered during cleaning.  That includes:

 - the outer shell
 - the lining
 - the interfacing
 - the fusing material
 - the trim

If a problem occurs, responsibility lies with the manufacturer, who did not properly test the garment before labeling.

At Classic Cleaners, we’ll never tell you “Don’t call us.”  But WomansDay.com is right: Every so often we find ourselves wanting to point to the manufacturer’s name on the label, saying to our customer, “Call HIM!”

by Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team