On any given day, those who walk into Treasured Garment Restoration in Stillwater, MN, will likely find Duane Schumann closely watching the clock,
although it’s not because he’s bored with his job as the facility’s restoration manager of damaged and vintage clothing.
When handling items that are historical, beloved, expensive, or oftentimes, all
three, it is paramount to practice precision and avoid overexposing such
priceless and fragile garments to cleaning chemicals.
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Duane will be the first to admit that his services can fall a bit on the costly
side, but his customers only bring in items they consider to be irreplaceable.
“If it takes me longer to process a piece, then obviously it’s going to cost more,” Duane noted. “Anything that’s vintage does not get processed inside a machine. It’s all done by hand cleaning and the procedure that I take costs $75 an hour to
process a vintage piece. Usually what I do is start off at about $75. Then,
after the first hour, it gets broken down into 15-minute increments, which
means $18.75 will be added to that $75 every 15 minutes. So, I pretty much keep
watching the clock to make sure I’m fair to the customer.”
On many occasions, Duane’s customers are often blown away by the results of his restoration process,
which gives him a gratified feeling.
“There have been some times that I really surprised people... things that nobody
ever thought could be turned around,” he said. “I’ve also had a few come in that I hate to be the doctor to tell you that you got
cancer, but there’s really nothing that can be done with this safely. It is what it is.
“No matter what step you take to try to make it go forward, it’s going to end up five steps backwards and you’ll have nothing left but mush. You have to know your limitations and draw the
line”
Fortunately, Duane does not have to draw the line very often. He really hates to
turn anything away, thus there is never a shortage of items to be worked on.
“What comes behind my wall are things that can take anywhere between two weeks to
a month to process,” he explained. “I have a shop full of wedding gowns. I’m the specialist who does that. I get anything that has to do with vintage
era... christening gowns, antique quilts and needlepoints, antique shoes, lamp
shades, rugs, draperies, stuffed animals. The list goes on and on.”
No matter what item passes through the door, Duane’s approach remains the same... such as the time the Minnesota Historical Society
sent in an expensive suit that had belonged to pop superstar Prince.
“There was a pen mark on the pants and they wanted me to try to get it out
without damaging the material,” he recalled. “This was a sharkskin suit so it was really super delicate material. I was able
to pull it off by getting the ink out of it.”
Duane never dwelled on the fact that the suit had belonged to Prince. He treats
every garment equally, which is one reason why he’s so successful.
“What you have to do with something like that is you have to keep in mind that
this is a customer just like any other customer. Yes, it’s Prince, but he is your customer,” he said. “Just follow through with the process and don’t worry about if it’s Obama’s suit or whatever. Once you start doing that, you’re going to give yourself limitations and you’re not going to be actually performing the job you can do. That’s why I believe and trust in myself 100 percent.”
For as long as he can remember, Duane has always been fascinated by vintage
clothing, something his grandmother often collected.
“She used to be kind of an antique clothes guru where she liked to wear older
fashion stuff,” he recalled. “I just kind of drew on that.”
His uncles also cultivated an avid interest in historical military clothing,
especially uniforms from World War II and the Korean War.
“A lot of my desire was into the military stuff, but then it just kind of went
off into different fabrics, the stitching, how things are put together, just
really analyzing the way things were done back in the day when the industrial
revolution wasn’t there and everything had to be made by hand,” he said. “It takes a creative mind to create that piece of lace or silk embroidered
together. It was an art in itself.”
Duane fostered a creative mind himself. He often toiled away on highly detailed
drawings, even at a young age, and he loved the fact that he lived across the
street from one of John Kosmoski’s world-renowned House of Kolor custom paint shops.
“I was always intrigued by the things they did because in his shop they would
paint cars and motorcycles in there,” he said. “Being a young kid, I’d go over there and watch how they did it and how they would operate the spray
gun, then take them apart and clean them.”
Not too surprisingly, restoring and painting custom cars and motorcycles is a
hobby that he still enjoys today.
Duane was 19 when he first started working in the cleaning industry at Don’s Leather Cleaning. Later, he enjoyed custom painting small airplanes for
Mitchell Painting for a stint before he opted to join with Clean N’ Press.
In the mid-1990s, he changed gears once again and worked in the dirt redemption
field for a company called Clean Soils.
“Basically, they would dig up contaminated soil from anywhere where there had
been a gas station and somebody wanted that property for something else,” he explained. “So, all of that soil would have to be pulled out. We would recycle it... put it
into a machine that would burn out all the contaminants and then reprocess it.”
The job taught Duane a lot of science and chemistry, knowledge he would later
apply to restoring garments. After six years, he burned out.
“I was always praying every day, ‘Oh Lord, please get me out of this dirty job. Get me into something that would
be a little cleaner’,” he laughed.
He returned to the cleaning industry in 1996 with Best Cleaning and Restoration
and remained there for about a decade.
Almost two years ago, Duane met with Dave and Polly Nemec of St. Croix Cleaners
in Stillwater, the first plant to earn the DLI Award of Excellence in
Minnesota.
The Nemecs wanted to open up a Treasured Garment Restoration branch and they
asked Duane to head up the division.
Due to the nature of vintage restoration, he probably only turns out about 50 or
60 garments a week. Fortunately, there’s no rush factor involved.
“There are six steps that I always follow through with,” he noted. “Test. Patience. Test. Patience. Test. Patience. If you follow all six of those,
you’re going to be OK.”
Throughout his career, the longest Duane has ever spent restoring an item was
two months. It happened to be on the oldest garment he has ever restored: a
wedding gown from 1832.
“On something like that, what I usually do is use a mild drycleaning solution
with a consistence of odorless mineral spirits and some soaps and sizing that
go into that,” he said. “I created a machine that helps me do that. It’s basically a tank that has an aeration system hooked up to it that I can adjust
the air level while I’m moving the piece around on a screen by my hand. So, the air keeps circulating
where it will flush the impurities out of the fabric and not agitate it too
much to tear it.”
Before Duane can work on such precious and delicate items, however, he has to
work hard to gain the trust of his customers.
“First of all, I always get involved with the customer and find out what their
feelings are, get the story behind what the piece is,” he said. “I have to give them that comfort in order for them to want to leave the item. I
care about what they’re telling me. I ensure them that the item will be staying with me in a safe
spot until it is complete and ready to be preserved or restored for wearing.
Until that point, they are leaving it with the person that it needs to be with.”
Duane’s clients include the Naegele family who own the Minnesota Wild hockey
franchise. Sometimes Jennifer Naegele brings in some interesting pieces that
simply defy description.
“She goes to England and all over the world to museums and buys things that you
would not believe,” he said. “I’ve done some bedspreads for her that were silver and gold embroidered that were
priceless, basically. If you’d put a number on it for a cleaners, you’d go belly up.”
For Duane, however, that’s just a typical day at the office. He simply never knows what will come in
next.
In fact, he was quite excited about a phone call he received recently about a
potential new project.
“They found a chest that had two dresses in it,” he said. “One was from 1802 and it was documented. And, there’s also one from the 1900s. She wants to have them restored.”
Though she hasn’t brought them in yet, Duane can’t help but anticipate the prospect of a new challenge.
“I really want to see that piece,” he said. “I don’t know anybody who would be as excited about that as me. It’s 207 years old! That’s something that really needs some attention and care to it.”
