AUGUSTSEPTEMBER,THECUT 41THE FILTHY RICHADryCleaner
Spills
Everything
nature. You write down “ice-cream stain” on the
ticket. But those who have the means don’t have
to explain themselves at all, because they have the
housekeeper drop it off for them.
The No. 1 craziest story has to be the young
lady who got married in an Oscar de la Renta
gown that probably cost $25,000. They were on
an island, and the photographer talked her into
wading into the water for photos. When the shoot
was over, they rolled up the dress and threw it in
a plastic bag. Two weeks later, it’s completely
molded. Black mold everywhere. Unfortunately,
the dress was destroyed. Then there was the
daughter of a Hong Kong billionaire who brought
in a custom white Chanel couture gown beaded
with real pearls, not synthetic. She had gotten red
wine on it. I would say it was a $500,000 dress.
We did get the red wine out. It was a painstaking
process—I did it myself. The dress never left my
hands. And I called my insurance company
before we started working on it to make sure that
we had coverage for the dress. Heaven forbid
something had happened.
Clients get emotional sometimes. We cleaned
and preserved a wedding dress for a bride, only
to have it sit in the store. When I finally called her
after four months, she told me that the marriage
didn’t last. It was four months. She didn’t want to
pick it up, but I didn’t have the space to keep it.
That was tough. Just the other day we had a client
who was really upset because her beautiful cream
silk dress—I believe it was a McQueen—had bad
ren’t correctable. She
er it. You know, I really
feel bad sometimes. I almost feel like I’m a doctor
breaking bad news. Like, “So-and-so’s not gonna
make it.” as told to bridget read
WHAT
SECRET
ITEMS DO
YOU KEEP
IN YOUR
UNDER
WEAR
DRAWER?“Weed(sealed
inajarforthe
smell),which
isanoldhabit
fromhigh
school(when
Iwastryingto
hideitfrom
myparents)
thathas
evidentlynot
died.”
—EmmaG.“The
Norwegian
versionofKit
Kats.My
mother-in-law
bringsthese
onceayear.
Istashthem
awaysomy
spousecan’t
indoreat
them.Thereare
threepacks
inthere
currently.”
—AmandaS.“Secret
cigarettes.”
—MaggieR.“Ihaveallmy
kids’baby
teethinthere.
Thereare
about15of
them.Just
loose,on
therightside.”
—JasonL.“Crumpledup
oldairplane
boarding
passesfromthe
timemy
husbandand
Ididlong
distancefor
manyyears.”
—LiorP.“Overdue
librarybooks.”
—AlisonG.“Ateeny-tiny
plasticbaby
Igotina
FatTuesday
kingcakea
fewyearsback.”
—JessicaB.LIFE HACKSCall Every Man
You Date
“My Husband.”
Trust Me,
They Love It.
ByCallie Beusmanexactly one year ago,
a passionate Twitter debate
burst forth over the term partner—
can straight people use it to
describe their significant others,
or must they stay in their lane and
stick to boyfriend and girlfriend?
The discussion was short-lived
but surfaced a salient point: There
aren’t enough terms in English to
describe nonmarital relationships;
it seems strange that we’d use
the same word to describe both the
person one gets a hickey from at
age 13 and the person one has lived
with for several years in adulthood.
At the time of this online
disagreement, I was newly out of
a long-term relationship and faced
with a similar conundrum but
reflected in a fun-house mirror:
what to call everyone I was “seeing.”
Absolutely no one was my
boyfriend, but “the guy I’m hooking
up with” and “my man-friend”
felt both inelegant and inadequate.
And so, in a test of irony, I began
to call each of them “my husband.”
The person I’d been casually
dating for several months? My
husband. The boring bro to whom
I sometimes send photos of my
butt? Hello, husband. The model-
slash-DJ I made out with once,
who would not stop sending
me unnervingly explicit DMs?
My dear, sweet husband.
The unserious use of matrimonial
language makes light of any
relationship insecurities we might
have. It allows us to enjoy men
while staving off the possibility of
one of those awful “What are
we?” conversations no one wants to
have. Best of all, it makes it clear
that I do not, under any
circumstances, wish for
them to be bound
to me legally (but in
a way that doesn’t
feel impersonal). I’m
just a woman who
calls all the men she’s
sleeping with “my husband.” So far,
the men in my life are onboard,
if only because it creates an
opportunity to say “mah wife” in
the Borat voice—an experience
each of my husbands has
PHOTOGRAPHS: UNIVERSAL PICTURES (BRIDESMAIDS); SNAP STILLS/SHUTTERSTOCK (BORAT) cherished, without exception.
Jerry Pozniak, owner and managing director
of luxury laundry service Jeeves New York, has
been in high-end clothing care for 33 years.mydadwasa dry cleaner. That’s how
I got into the business. I’ve seen a lot, to
say the least. Some of our clients are
celebrities who use pseudonyms. All of our clients
have fantastic wardrobes. But the stains are the
same ones everyone has. We get red wine on a
regular basis. Food, of course, though the more
exotic stuff can be harder to get out. Anything
with turmeric in it is really difficult. Squid ink,
too. There’s blood, urine, vomit, and a lot of
makeup. We all have our bad moments. With the
more embarrassing stains, you have to be as dis-
creet as possible. We let the client tell us what they
want to and then go from there. Oftentimes,
they’ll slide a bag over to you without a word. You
stick your hands in it and immediately realize,Oh
God, someone got sick on the garment. Then there
are those who are less than truthful. A client in
Palm Beach was at a party and fell. She told me
that she’d skinned her knee and gotten “a little bit
of blood” on it. It was literally covered in blood. It
looked like something out ofDexter.Another cli-
ent threw her cat under the bus when asked about
a urine
have lef
peed on it.” And when people say, “I’ve had choco-
late ice cream,” you know what it really is. People
say vanilla ice cream, too, for stains of an amorous(^)