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

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

Recently on this blog, we’ve told two wedding gown restoration success stories:

Classic Cleaners of Indianapolis restores improperly cleaned wedding gown to glorious beauty!

Classic Cleaners restores 1947 wedding gown–beautiful bride wears it with pride!

We use the same processes in Classic Cleaners’ safe, gentle, and highly effective wedding gown restoration service and Classic Cleaners’ safe, gentle, and highly effective cleaning and MuseumCare preservation service for wedding gowns.

The main difference between the two services is this: We restore wedding gowns that have become discolored or otherwise damaged over time, and we clean and preserve recently worn wedding gowns so that they do not become damaged over time. Of course, once the gown is restored and worn again in a ceremony, it needs to be preserved thereafter to keep it beautiful for the next bride in your family.

One of the tools we use to preserve your precious gown is our archival-quality wedding gown preservation box. In this post I’m including two pictures of the box. The first is a professional photograph of the box, which, as you can see, has an inner box with a see-through window and an outer box.

The other photo is not professional (I took it!), but I’m posting it here to show you that we put our preservation boxes on display in many of our stores. In the display models, the outer box has been cut away to show the inner box, but, of course, that’s just for display.

Classic Cleaners’ archival-quality wedding gown preservation boxes have many special features to keep your gown clean and odor-free while preserving its original beautiful color as time goes by. As we say on our wedding gown preservation page (linked to above),

We layer your gown with acid-free tissue and carefully fold it into an acid-free, archival-quality preservation box. We store metal buttons and findings and shoulder pads separately, stuffing the sleeves, bodice, and folds with additional acid-free tissue to prevent hard wrinkles. The preservation box, designed especially for this purpose, allows the gown to breathe, keeping it in perfect condition for many decades to come.

The box itself is made of acid-free materials and lets your gown breathe.

We’ve earned a reputation of having the best wedding gown preservation service in Indianapolis because we take such exquisite care with your gown. For a gratis consultation on your gown, please visit your favorite Classic Cleaners location or contact us at the number below!

–Matt
The Classic Cleaners Blog Team

•For immediate help with cleaning, please call (317) 845-5244 or email us
•Share your Classic Cleaners stories and photos on this blog
•RSS this blog

Recently on this blog, we’ve told two wedding gown restoration success stories:

Classic Cleaners of Indianapolis restores improperly cleaned wedding gown to glorious beauty!

Classic Cleaners restores 1947 wedding gown–beautiful bride wears it with pride!

We use the same processes in Classic Cleaners’ safe, gentle, and highly effective wedding gown restoration service and Classic Cleaners’ safe, gentle, and highly effective cleaning and MuseumCare preservation service for wedding gowns.

The main difference between the two services is this: We restore wedding gowns that have become discolored or otherwise damaged over time, and we clean and preserve recently worn wedding gowns so that they do not become damaged over time. Of course, once the gown is restored and worn again in a ceremony, it needs to be preserved thereafter to keep it beautiful for the next bride in your family.

One of the tools we use to preserve your precious gown is our archival-quality wedding gown preservation box. In this post I’m including two pictures of the box. The first is a professional photograph of the box, which, as you can see, has an inner box with a see-through window and an outer box.

The other photo is not professional (I took it!), but I’m posting it here to show you that we put our preservation boxes on display in many of our stores. In the display models, the outer box has been cut away to show the inner box, but, of course, that’s just for display.

Classic Cleaners’ archival-quality wedding gown preservation boxes have many special features to keep your gown clean and odor-free while preserving its original beautiful color as time goes by. As we say on our wedding gown preservation page (linked to above),

We layer your gown with acid-free tissue and carefully fold it into an acid-free, archival-quality preservation box. We store metal buttons and findings and shoulder pads separately, stuffing the sleeves, bodice, and folds with additional acid-free tissue to prevent hard wrinkles. The preservation box, designed especially for this purpose, allows the gown to breathe, keeping it in perfect condition for many decades to come.

The box itself is made of acid-free materials and lets your gown breathe.

We’ve earned a reputation of having the best wedding gown preservation service in Indianapolis because we take such exquisite care with your gown. For a gratis consultation on your gown, please visit your favorite Classic Cleaners location or contact us at the number below!

–Matt
The Classic Cleaners Blog Team

•For immediate help with cleaning, please call (317) 845-5244 or email us
•Share your Classic Cleaners stories and photos on this blog
•RSS this blog