National Clothesline

There’s a personal story I enjoy telling whenever I am asked to address a convention or seminar on drycleaning.

My dad was a custom tailor and it was the practice in my family that when a boy reached the ripe old age of eight or ten years it was his duty to bring Papa his supper. Since I was the youngest of four brothers, the job became permanent for me and, much to my dismay, my dad also thought it best that one of his sons become a tailor.

I often asked “Why me?” I never liked it, being a born extrovert and not suited for silent bench work. I even questioned why he never hit me as I was the most destructive of all his sons. He explained that he thought being a tailor was punishment enough.

One evening as I was doing my clean-up chores, I examined the buttonhole cutter my dad was using as he was cutting buttonholes on a vest. After changing the hole size from a vest to an overcoat, I proceeded to do some damage in my own little creative fashion.

I thought my dad was having a heart attack when he came back to the cutting table and made the next cut! He looked heavenward and called every dear Italian saint — San Antonio, San Giuseppe and Jesus Christo — and pleaded to take away the strength of his arms so he wouldn’t be able to murder his youngest son.

I understood just enough Italian to run out of there as fast as I could and returned only when I though his blood pressure had settled to normal and, of course, tried to seem very industrious by sweeping up, etc.

I didn’t get the beating of my life (he was a gentle man) and I was in the shop when the customer came in to try on his new suit. The pants fit well and, as he tried on the vest, he remarked, “Hey, Colucci, why the large buttonhole?”

My dad looked over at me, winked and said, “What? Oh, that’s for your watch chain!”

“Watch chain?” the customer said. “Wow, you can’t beat custom tailoring!”

I tell the story for a few reasons, one being that a drycleaner has to be, among many things, resourceful. For example, how do you handle the customer who claims, “It was the first time it was cleaned and I always pay $100 for my shirts”?

Let’s apply this to the biggest and most devastating crisis facing our industry. We are accused of polluting the air, the ground and the water. Homes are contaminated with fumes from clothes back from the cleaners, they say. The general public is always “being taken to the cleaners.”

Well, I for one can’t take this any longer and I’m prepared to do something about it.

I want to prove that freshly drycleaned clothes not only make you look and feel good, they are healthier, too. Just like the watch chain story, let’s reverse a negative into a positive.

We ship out millions of plastic bags a week, which we also recycle. That’s millions of walking billboards that should be announcing, “I look good and I feel good when my clothes are freshly cleaned. And when they are drycleaned they are returned bacteria-free and live steam pressing and finishing guarantees it.”

I want to reverse the terrible press and image the drycleaning industry has been unjustly given, and it can be done if we all get behind this kind of movement. This business has put a lot of bread on my table and I earned it through hard work and dedication, just as the hundreds of drycleaners I have had the pleasure of knowing.

It’s time we let the general public know that we truly are professionals.