I was talking with a friend of mine last night about dry cleaning costs. He just bought a Brioni suit. (Yeah, I know..., but he thinks that the suit is the best suit ever made and in that he already bought it, I'm not going to burst his bubble.) When I told him how much I pay to care for my clothing he was stunned. He thought it was incredibly expensive. I tried to explain that bespoke suits, pants and handmade shirts must be handled very carefully, but he lives in the $3 per shirt cleaning world. As you all know, those shirt pressing machines that dry cleaners use are like Medieval torture devices for shirts. I told him not to take his suit to some dry cleaner who is going to charge $20 to clean it by putting it on the suit pressing machine. He said "dry cleaning is dry cleaning."

I send all my shirts, pants and suits to my tailor where someone prepares the clothes for cleaning by basting the creases in the pants, removing the buttons from my suits, etc. The clothes are then sent to the dry cleaner where the clothes are cleaned but not pressed. The clean clothes are returned to the tailor shop for pressing. The man who presses my suits at the tailor shop spends almost two hours pressing a suit. He has been pressing bespoke clothing for over thirty years. The clothes are sealed in clear bags and labeled with date of the cleaning (or as my tailor terms it, "restoration") so that I know when I last wore a piece of clothing.

The cleaning charges are as follows:
    Shirt - $18
    Pants -$30
    Suit - $125

Are these charges similar to what others on this forum pay for cleaning? Do your tailors handle cleaning for you?

Rob
Miami