Dear Prestige Customer:

I wish to share my news with you now, ahead of time, before I notify the press. Not long from now, I will officially announce that Prestige Dry Cleaners has acquired Red Hanger Cleaners.

Who would have thought? Normally, it’s the larger business that takes over the smaller one. This time it’s the other way around.

I am still a little amazed by the whole thing, but this much is certain: I owe YOU my thanks. Loyal customers like you, who have stood by Prestige for the long haul, have made this possible.

Why this is great news for Prestige customers

Since we’re taking over them, nothing changes at Prestige. You’ll have the same driver you’ve grown to count on. You’ll have the same people you know and trust continuing to care for your clothes.

Plus, you’ll receive an important extra. Though Prestige doesn’t normally issue coupons, I’ve decided to honor all Red Hanger coupons for my Prestige customers.

This month’s coupon is for 10% off. Just CLICK HERE, print the coupon, and place it in your can’t-miss-it yellow bag. Don’t worry about the Red Hanger logo. Anytime in February, when I see that coupon, I’ll personally see to it that 10% comes right off the top of your bill.

The success of Prestige Cleaners is more than I could have imagined. I never forget that it is thanks to you. I intend to do all I can to deserve your continued loyalty.

Questions or concerns? Please email customerservice@prestigedrycleaners.com and I’ll get right back to you.

Kindest regards and warmest thanks,

Ryan Fish
President, Prestige Dry Cleaners

P.S. It’s easier to change the sign on one Prestige building than on 16 Red Hanger buildings. When I get around to changing the Prestige sign, please know that on the inside we’re still Prestige Cleaners.

P.P.S. The now-former owners of Red Hanger and I have been friends for years. I am happy to say that they are as pleased about this as I am. I wish them success in their future endeavors.

On the passing of the person
to thank for wrinkle-free fabric

Last month the New York Times marked the passing, at age 97, of a scientist most people haven’t heard of, yet whose groundbreaking work has spared a lot of people a lot of ironing since the early 1960s.

We think it’s only fitting here at Prestige Cleaners to take a moment to remember and honor the late Dr. Ruth Benerito.

Among her many accomplishments, Dr. Benerito is largely credited with figuring out how to produce wrinkle-free cotton, or, as the Times more poetically put it, in solving the “… problem of persuading cotton, constitutionally crease-prone, to lie down and behave.” Her obituary in the Times hailed the achievement as “… one of the most significant technological developments of the 20th century.”

“Remarkable” falls short when it comes to describing Dr. Benerito’s life and career. Born in New Orleans in 1916, she entered college at 15, earned a PhD in chemistry from the University of Chicago, and worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture until her “retirement.”

We put “retirement” in quotes because, following that, she taught at the University of New Orleans right up to age 81.

At age 95, Dr. Benerito was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. By then had she racked up more than 50 patents, only some of which were in cotton chemistry.

There was a good deal more to the late Dr. Ruth Benerito than that. We recommend the New York Times tribute to this remarkably accomplished yet modest scientist, which you can read by clicking here.

How do we iron thousands of shirts?
One at a time.

We don’t have some huge, automated machine in the back ruthlessly ironing hundreds of shirts per minute all by itself.

The real magic at Prestige Cleaners is in skilled handwork. Our professional equipment lets us press more thoroughly, and, yes, a little faster, but not at lightning speed. At least, not if you care to do it right, which we do. We wouldn’t think of turning everything over to a machine. We insist on having your shirts cared for by a real person, carefully trained, who is really, really fussy.

You’d see for yourself if you watched us press a shirt. You’d see one of our people taking time to gingerly adjust and fuss by hand while doing the body of the shirt, and then resume fussing all over again using a special iron made just for collars and cuffs. Next, you’d see more hand-adjusting and fussing as your shirt was gently positioned, just so, on a soft, body-shaped cushion for perfect pressing.

The next step, “curing,” has no at-home equivalent. We use a special iron to smooth collars and make them perfectly round. Curing eliminates those annoying inside ridges, so the collar feels natural around the neck and folds nicely down for an even, finished look.

Even after all that, no shirt leaves our facility until one of our surest-eyed people inspects and passes it. Their job is to inspect every shirt—every single one—for the tiniest detail. On-the-spot, they use hand irons for touch-up. Most people have to squint to see what catches their trained eye. (When other cleaners call us nitpicky, we take it as a compliment.)

Don’t let our fast turnaround fool you. With every shirt, we exercise the kind of care we think you’d want us to.

Got a broken button? We keep several thousand on hand,
so chances are we can find you a match. For free.

Button Physics
Or, Why the Silly Things Break

Who would have thought that the depth of the indented part in the middle of a button would affect how long the button lasts? For that matter, who would have thought that anyone would have taken the time to research the topic? But thanks to whomever did, Prestige Cleaners is able to shed a bit of light on which kinds of buttons are most and least prone to break, and why.

You may have a big, thick, cool-looking button. But if the bowl in the middle (where the holes are) is too deep, it weakens the whole button. That’s why big, thick, cool-looking buttons seem to break all the time, while run-of-the-mill, normal-looking buttons seem to endure endless torture.

Ironically (referring to irony, not to ironing, although a case could be made for both), those big, thick, cool-looking buttons usually cost a lot more. Not because they’re designed to last—which they aren’t—but because they’re designed to look big, thick, and cool.

Over the years we have noted that some brands of shirt are pretty reliable and consistent when it comes to durable buttons. These include Van Heusen, Kirkland (Costco), Brooks Brothers, Stafford (JCPenney), and Nordstrom.

If you have a broken button, we’re not going to quibble about button physics or tell you that you shouldn’t have bought a shirt with big, thick, cool-looking buttons. Just bring us the shirt and we’ll replace the buttons at no charge. Ever seen our cache of buttons? You can see part of it in the photo above. There’s a good chance we can match your button or come really, really close.

What you didn’t know about the
person who runs our shirt laundry

We admit the story sounds unlikely. But every word is true.

When the person in charge of our shirt laundry was a little girl, she watched her mother iron her father’s shirts and handkerchiefs. To her, nothing looked like more fun. Perhaps other girls her age dreamt of someday getting an education, embarking on a career, dating, running for office, having children, or what-have-you. Not her. She couldn’t wait until she was old enough to iron.

Really.

At last the day arrived when she had grown taller than the ironing board. Her mom permitted her to iron a few of her dad’s handkerchiefs. Finding the experience more exhilarating, more fulfilling than she’d even imagined, she was hooked. Not long after, her mother began letting her iron not just handkerchiefs, but shirts. Heaven! Later, when she was old enough to babysit, she saved her money — we’re not making this up — to buy starch. Something of a luxury at the time, starch let her to do an even better ironing job at home.

Her parents and siblings could hardly believe their good fortune. Here was a family member who begged them to let her iron everything they put in the wash. (“Well, OK, if you insist, we’ll let you do our ironing for us …”) Needless to say, everything she touched was ironed to perfection. Hers was the sharpest looking family on the block.

If you think her passion for laundering and ironing sounds a bit over the top, we wouldn’t entirely disagree. Nor would she. But when you send your shirts to Prestige Cleaners for laundering and pressing, aren’t you glad that she heads our quality control?

Dark, DARK slacks may have
been the fashion for reasons
other than you might guess

A century and a half ago, cleaners didn’t really clean. In fact, people brought wrinkled and soiled clothes not to a dry cleaner, but to a steam shop. As the name implies, steam shops steamed away wrinkles.

And stain removal? There wasn’t much of that to speak of. When you brought in a stained garment, the steam shop simply dyed the fabric a darker shade. There was a tacit agreement among steamers and their customers to act as if this hid the stain, even though it seldom really did. If later on you later showed up with another stain, they dyed the garment even darker. Next time, darker still. And so forth.

Since dying was a common practice, we doubt that it fooled anyone into believing that a very, VERY dark charcoal gray suit was in fact new and stain-free. We must wonder, however, if the practice explains why extremely dark gray and navy suits became and remained the business standard for so many years.

All of that was before Prestige Cleaners’ time. When we opened our doors, professional laundering and dry cleaning were well-established sciences. We keep up on advances in those sciences as they occur. Even though staining your clothing is not something we’d advise going out of your way to do, rest assured that when stains happen we’ll be ready for you.

Blazer or Sport Coat — What’s the Diff?

What makes one jacket a blazer and another a sport coat?

If you enjoy seeing people show off what they don’t know, raise that question the next time a group gathers around the water cooler. You will hear as many answers as there are people in the group.

There’s a reason for that. The line between blazer and sport coat may have been sharply drawn at one time — note the emphasis on may — but if there ever really was such a line, today it is fuzzy at best.

According to one source, the sport coat came into being as a solution for people who found it a bit uncomfortable to participate in sporting events while dressed in a suit. Makes perfect sense to us. Playing tennis or soccer would certainly be less uncomfortable if your jacket and slacks didn’t have to match.

As for the distinction between “blazer” and “sport coat,” many hold that the terms are interchangeable. Others beg to differ. Blazers, they’ll tell you, have sewn-on pockets and come only in navy blue, whereas sport coats have suit-like, flapped pockets and come in all colors and patterns. Still others assert that “blazer” refers to both women’s and men’s jackets, whereas “sport coat” refers only to men’s jackets.

No matter. When you include a jacket with your order, we won’t make you tell us whether it’s a blazer or a sport coat. We’ll just thank you for your business. Then, three or so days later, we’ll return the whatever-one-calls-it, freshly cleaned and pressed.

Before you curse that jammed zipper,
here are some remedies you might try

Alas, the noble zipper. Every day, millions of zippers around the world open and close without so much as a hint of resistance. So common is it for zippers to glide effortlessly, to cinch clothing and luggage with aplomb, that we scarcely give them a second thought. At least, when they work. We sure think about them when they jam. Especially since there seems to be a law that zippers jam only when you’re in a hurry and only when you have nothing else you can change into.

Here are some things you can do about a jammed zipper (besides stomping and cursing, which won’t fix the zipper, but which some people may find therapeutic):

Sometimes a zipper isn’t damaged, just stubborn. A bit of lubrication may be all you need to return it to its old, cooperative self. We do not, however, recommend dumping motor or sewing machine oil all over a zipper, nor do we recommend spraying it with WD-40. Instead, we recommend trying a great product made just for this purpose called Zipper Ease. You can find it in stores and online.

If one or more of a metal zipper’s teeth are bent, you might try gently adjusting them with a pair of needle-nosed pliers. Note that we said gently, in order to avoid damaging the zipper even more. (But then, if the zipper is toast, what have you lost?) Another reason to proceed with caution is to lessen chances of tearing the clothing item itself.

When it comes to plastic zippers, here’s a preventive maintenance tip: too much heat can warp them, so watch the dryer settings.

For a hopelessly jammed zipper, here is a sure-fire remedy. Let Prestige Cleaners replace it. Our tiny charge for zipper replacement is a lot less than replacing a whole garment. Just enclose the garment and a note when you set out your Prestige Cleaners bag. A few days later, we’ll return the garment with a new, well-behaved zipper.

Oft-overlooked success secret

One of our customers used to wash and press his own shirts. We will even concede, though not without some reluctance, that he was pretty good at it.

So why did he switch to Prestige Cleaners? It might have something to do with what happened during his first day on a new job. The boss looked him up and down and said, “The secret to success around here is starched collars and cuffs.” A not-so-subtle hint, but our customer was pragmatic enough not to take umbrage and to accept the advice instead.

In an ideal world, being good at your job should be all that matters. But in the real world, looking the part matters, too. We’re not saying that that’s good or moral. It’s simply how it is.

Collars and cuffs are the first giveaway of home washed and ironed shirts, but other signs follow. A few hours into the workday, it’s easy to see the difference in the rest of the shirt. Even the best home-laundered shirts start going limp.

Prestige’s specialized equipment—backed by fastidious people who have been with us for years—gives clothes a more finished, long lasting look. It simply cannot be duplicated at home. That’s why what we do is called professional dry cleaning and laundering.

Still, we must quibble with our customer’s boss on one point. Starch is hardly all there is to a perfect shirt. We put a lot more expertise into making shirts look great than just that. In fact, you can tell us not to use any starch at all, and we’ll still work our magic.

How Prestige Cleaners chooses
a $100 winner each month

It should be no surprise that our monthly $100 giveaway is growing in popularity. Who doesn’t want a hundred bucks worth of free cleaning services?

Every now and then, we receive a note from someone who wants desperately to win. Reasons range from sentimental (“I want to look pretty for my wedding”) to heartrending (“I lost my job and need to look good for an interview”) to, shall we say, rather direct (“Pick me! Do you hear? Me, Me, MEEE!!!”).

So we thought this might be a good time to explain how we select each month’s winner, and share the steps we take to ensure everyone has an equal chance.

First, we delete duplicate entries. If anyone enters multiple times, it is no avail. (Sometimes, however, we’ll do a special promotion where the reward for participation is a second contest entry. In fact, we’re doing that with our cartoon caption contest, which is going on right now—click here.)

Next, we select the winner.

Here, we must make a confession.

“We” don’t select the winner. A computer does.

Yes, all names go into a computer. The computer selects a winner by use of special, randomizing software. True to the term “randomizing,” the choice is random. Like most computers, this one has not an ounce of empathy. For all it cares, the winner could be the town pauper or Donald Trump. So if you know people who write eloquent pleas in hopes of influencing us, you might advise them that the effort makes no difference. Or, not. We love receiving all letters, including those. We’re not so sure we want them to stop.

While all of this may be discouraging news for those who hope to tilt the odds in their favor, it’s actually great news for everyone. It means that, every month, everyone who enters Prestige Cleaner’s contest has a fair chance at winning. If you haven’t yet entered this month’s contest, it’s not too late. Click here.