Irish solo dance dress

To find something as special as Maggie Ramsey’s “solo dress”, you’d have to fly to Europe.

Only Irish dancers who have won first prize in certain levels of dance competition are privileged to wear one like it, we learned.  

The challenge of cleaning this three-year old red Irish dance dress, made by Elevation Design, had to do with its elaborate ornamentation.  The garment is decorated with everything from metal flakes to sequins (four different kinds), and has an under layer made of red and silver snakeskin. 

The Ramsey dress seemed to combine a number of the toughest challenges dry cleaning technicians face:

• Red dyes tend to be less stable, with red garments likely to lose vibrancy faster than other colors.
• Sequins often melt with heat, so even steam-cleaning posed risks.
• There is no one method that is safe for all the different types of fabric used in that one dress – a normal dry cleaning label from the International Association for Textile Care Labeling couldn’t begin to cover all the different parts of Maggie’s solo dress.

But, by carefully combining different tools and techniques developed over decades of specialized dry cleaning

Maggie Ramsey at the 2010 Indianapolis Feis Irish Dance Competition

experience in Indiana, including compressed air, specialized brushes, steam guns, new combinations of stain-fighting solutions and more, Classic Cleaners professionals were able to create the beautiful result pictured here.

Maggie’s mom gave us permission to share her e-mail note:

I can’t thank you enough for the excellent care you took in cleaning my daughter’s Irish Dance Solo Dress. It is beautiful!  I have sent a message to all the other Irish Dance families at our academy about our wonderful experience and great the dress turned out.  If they are thinking of purchasing a used solo dress that needs cleaning or have never had their solo dress steam cleaned, they should really contact you at the Bash location Classic Cleaners.  We were very pleased with our experience.

My daughter’s name is Maggie Ramsey and she is with the Richens/Timan Academy of Indiana located at Washington Square Mall….Thank you so much.

Cathi Ramsey

With a testimonial like that, it feels as if Classic Cleaners has won the prize!

 by Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

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

Back in the day, our great-great-grandparents knew Milk of Magnesia was a good remedy to “buffer” stomach acid.

  But, along with preventing acid indigestion in our own bodies, did you know that books and clothes need to be protected as well?

When Classic Cleaners professionals are preserving an heirloom or a wedding gown, for instance, they use layers of acid-free paper to stuff the garment, and then pack the item it into a box made of acid-free material.

"Buffering" clothes with acid-free paper

(The definition of acid-free paper is paper with a neutral PH of around 7.) 

Up until the middle 1800’s, paper was made from various plants, including mulberry and flax.  Then it was discovered that paper could be made more cheaply from wood pulp. It took chemicals to break the wood down into pulp, however, and that process left a residue of acid. The problem was that the acid would turn the pulp yellow and cause it to deteriorate over time.  In fact, many valuable books in libraries became illegible over time, all due to the effects of acid in the paper on which they had been printed!

Today, much of the commercially produced paper is acid free because, during the processing of the wood, “buffers” are added to neutralize the acid in the pulp (kind of like putting “Tums” or Milk of Magnesia in the mix).

Layered with acid free material and loaded into the acid free archival quality preservation box, your gown or heirloom can “breathe”.  Good thing, too, because at Classic Cleaners, we work hard to preserve our reputation as the best wedding gown preservation service from Indianapolis to Noblesville and everywhere in between.

Acid indigestion for clothes?  No way!  After all, as a Classic Cleaners customer, you’ve got a “buffer” in the dry cleaning business!

by Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

January 23, 1995 : Love, Honor, Cherish, reads the inscription embroidered on the blanket given to Rick and Regina Mattson to mark the occasion of their wedding fifteen and a half years ago.  But, while Rick and Regina continued to love, honor, and cherish each other, time had been less than kind to their blanket, as Regina discovered to her horror a few weeks ago.

Regina's wedding blanket before restoration

A gift from Rick’s parents, the blanket had been displayed in an honored spot in the entryway to the Mattson home, with a stuffed toy holding it in place. But, over the years, the white blanket had gradually yellowed, and streaks of gray had collected on the hem.

Regina's blanket after Classic Cleaners' restoration

Regina, manager of Classic CleanersStore #12 at 11202 Fall Creel Boulevard, rushed to have the blanket dry cleaned, only to learn that the yellowing had persisted.  Leon Neal came to the rescue, using heirloom restoration techniques to return the blanket to its former glory.

Formerly employed by a construction company, Regina Mattson came to work at Classic Cleaners last November.  She reports she “absolutely loves” her great customers and all the support she receives from management, in particular from district manager Dee Godwin.

Now, with her wedding blanket restored, Regina is glad to provide her very own “testimonial” to the talents of Classic Cleaners’ professionals!

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

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

Heirloom toy dinosaur

Dinosaurs haven’t roamed the earth for 65 million years – except for one very special one, that is, who showed up at Classic Cleaners last month. According to the Guardian, most dinosaurs did well to survive thirty years; our Classic Cleaners’ find was fifty years old!

So what’s the story? The dinosaur is a stuffed animal given to our customer fifty years ago as a birthday present from her brother.  Now, she would like to give it to her grandson, so she asked the professionals at Classic Cleaners for help cleaning and repairing the creature. As you can see, our dino friend survived handsomely!

To preserve treasured heirlooms of any kind and of any age, we use the same advanced technology and techniques we employ for wedding gown restoration, carefully cleaning, treating, and repairing each item to bring it back to life. Dino is not only prepared for immediate enjoyment by our client’s grandson, who knows? He may bring joy for generations to come!

In a different restoration assignment, a Classic Cleaners’ customer brought in a once-beautiful pair of cloth-trimmed shoes.  Because the shoes had been stored for fifteen years in plastic, the leather on the shoes had turned the lace overlay yellow.  While we normally don’t recommend preservation for shoes, this pair, we were informed, held great sentimental value. With expert and painstaking hand treatment, our Classic Cleaners technicians were able to bring the shoes back to their former beauty.

Before

Shoes after restoration

At Classic Cleaners, we try to bring beauty back to the eye of every beholder!

by Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team