Dry Cleaning In The USA

[dirkomatic]

Man, they had to do it to me... Picked up two kilts today and the pleats are messed up. Just when I was bragging on them. Now I've got to sped a couple hours re doing them. Shoot.

[CollinMacD]

Since I have had no experience with bring kilts to the cleaners here in the US, could somebody please outline for me the do's
and don'ts about having the kilt, jacket or anything else dry cleaned. Would like to know much more so I don't make costly mistakes.

Thanks...

[Katia]

Just a couple off the top of my head-- if you must have it pressed, baste the pleats. Jacket buttons may tarnish, so you might consider removing or covering (did someone here once suggest tinfoil?). And I once heard of someone who had her dance kilt cleaned, and the dye from the straps ran onto the kilt-- the dry cleaner first tried to say the cleaning didn't do it, then tried to fix it, ruining the fabric in the process. Not sure how common of an issue this is, or if this person just happened to have low-quality straps on their kilt.

And, if I take anything expensive to the cleaners, I take photos first (have heard too many "they said it was already like that before they cleaned it" horror stories). Better if the camera date-stamps it or you have the newspaper in the photo or something.

[RichardtheLarge]

Unless the wool is heavily soiled, brushing with a garment brush may suffice. You can also spray linings with vodka to eliminate odor.

[The TALL TN Scot]

I have mixed feelings about my local dry cleaner. I go to them with all of my military stuff and they do phenomenal work. When I asked if they clean and press kilts, they said yes and the cost would depend on the number of pleats. Seeing that I never mentioned that aspect, I was immediately impressed. When I picked it up, it was clean and pressed and looked almost new.

However, I was a little frustrated to see that they fastened it to a regular shirt hanger with......safety pins through the top hem rather than a skirt hanger (I even offered to leave my kilt hanger, but they declined... I can understand that though). The straps were a little bent from how they folded, but oh well, that's a simple fix (just wear it). The biggest grumble I have is that they affixed a barcode sticker to the inside. I assume that this is for the computer system to track, but this thing is stuck on there so strongly that I fear I might not be able to remove it.

I plan to talk with them in length about it when I go there with another kilt. Yes, they did a good enough job to warrant future kilt cleaning from me, but I have questions about whayt I stated above that I want to address with them.