Gown Cleaning & Preservation

Introduction

The restoration, hand cleaning, hand finishing and archival preservation of a bridal gown is a scientifically informed discipline, guided by a growing body of published scientific research on the chemical processes by which all textiles, including bridal gowns, deteriorate over time.

Our name – Museum Quality GownCare – derives from the fact that all the techniques, processes and packaging materials we use is a careful synthesis of:

• this published scientific research,
• the practical application of this scientific research by museum textile conservators throughout the world, and
• the sensitivity, knowledge, skill and experience derived from cleaning and finishing tens of thousands of designer, high fashion, specialty and couture garments and gowns over the past 25 years.

Our reputation for technical excellence has been built on obsessive attention to every detail.

It is this attention to detail that distinguishes our gowncare services from the “cleaning and boxing” or “heirlooming” services offered by other providers – ordinary cleaners; bridal and floral boutiques; wedding planners and consultants; home-based, independent sales representatives; and self-styled wedding gown specialists.

So much so that we were featured in a New York Times article on the subject.

And we can do this (in most cases) even if your bridal gown has been contaminated by fire, smoke, soot, water, mold, mildew and/or humidity as a result of a fire or flood.

Alternative packaging method

There is an alternative way to package your bridal gown for short or longer term storage. Although it’s less effective over the long term, it’s a much less costly alternative.

So, you might want to consider hanging your bridal gown in one of our breathable, bridal gown storage bags. These storage bags, measuring 72” high x 24” wide x 6” gusset at the top flaring to a 20” gusset at the bottom, are suitable for long bridal gowns with or without a full train and crinoline.

For more information on our breathable, bridal gown storage bags, please click here.

No stuffing in a chest that’s way too small

Unlike ordinary cleaners, we’ll never stuff your gown into a one-size-fits-all wedding gown box.

‍Ordinary cleaners typically offer a box that’s around 32 x 22 x 8.

At Museum Quality GownCare, we offer eight different sizes of bridal gown storage chests:

30 x 18 x 6

30 x 24 x 6

38 x 24 x 6

38 x 24 x 8

40 x 24 x 8

47 x 24 x 10

47 x 24 x 12

51 x 24 x 15

This way we can accommodate any size dress – from a classic, straight line, tight fitting gown to a princess gown with a voluminous skirt and cathedral train. And we can still gently and carefully package your gown with a minimum of creases or folds.

Why do we offer eight different sizes of bridal gown storage chests?

Because stuffing a bridal gown into a wedding gown box will result in extensive creasing that’ll be almost impossible to remove in future years.

To mentally picture this issue, remember those Space Bag® commercials that compress an entire season’s wardrobe into a single plastic bag?

When it comes to preserving other ceremonial or sentimental  garments that are much smaller in size — such as flower girl dresses, communion dresses, confirmation dresses, christening gowns and baptismal gowns — we offer a choice of three different sizes of storage chests:

20.5  x  16.5  x  2

20.5  x  24.5  x  2

22.5  x  28.5  x  2

There’s one more point to make regarding our acid-free, lignin-free, sulphur-free, chlorine-free storage chests: Our storage chests are custom manufactured to our size specifications by two companies recognized by museum textile conservators as the premier U. S. manufacturers of archival chests for the storage of museum-quality textiles.

You’ll find our museum-quality textile storage chests in usage at major museums and institutions throughout the USA, including the Smithsonian.

No purging of the oxygen inside the chest

Many ordinary cleaners claim, that in order to prevent oxidation or yellowing of your bridal gown, you should:

• hermetically or vacuum seal the wedding gown box in plastic, and
• remove all the oxygen from the box and replace it with an inert gas such as nitrogen.

We strongly disagree. For a number of reasons:

• It’s scientifically impossible to “seal” a paperboard-based wedding gown box so it’s completely airtight.
• The plastic typically used to “seal” these wedding gown boxes is not airtight over the long term. The inert gas will escape over time rendering the gas-for-oxygen-swap functionally useless.
• The plastic typically used to “seal” these wedding gown boxes is not chemically inert. This means that as the plastic ages and deteriorates, it’ll degrade, “release” acids, and trap these acids inside the chest. This negates the very reason for preserving your bridal gown in the first place – protection against acids.
• The plastic used to “seal” these wedding gown boxes traps moisture inside the box and promotes the formation of mold and mildew.
• It’s important for air to circulate throughout your bridal gown storage chest. All textiles, even synthetics, must be allowed to “breathe”.

Sealing a wedding gown box in plastic and substituting the oxygen with an inert gas is nothing more than a marketing gimmick.

Why do we say marketing gimmick?

Because museum textile conservators do not store any of their museum textiles that are not on display in this manner.

While some museums display the rarest of their textiles in specially-constructed chambers that are filled with nitrogen (and where the nitrogen levels are constantly monitored by sophisticated  monitoring equipment), the notion that a wedding gown cleaner can create a similar environment in a cardboard box defies common sense.

In other words, there’s simply no substitute for using a bridal gown storage chest that incorporates the most advanced preservation technology available today to protect your cherished gown over the long-term.

But don’t take our word for it.

Visit the Smithsonian Institution or Textile Museum for their do’s and don’ts of textile preservation. These museum textile conservators are responsible for protecting tens of thousands textiles in their collections that are not currently on display. So you can rest assured that they’re on the cutting edge of preservation technology.

No subcontracting to any wholesale wedding gown processor

There are thousands of local and online service providers in the USA offering “cleaning and boxing” (aka “heirlooming”) services.

These providers include ordinary dry cleaners, bridal boutiques, floral boutiques, wedding planners and consultants, home-based independent sales representatives, and self-styled wedding gown specialists.

As we previously indicated, we do all our work in-house and follow a cleaning, finishing and preservation regimen that’s grounded in textile science. Not “cleaning and boxing” myth.

Given that there are so many  “cleaning and boxing” service providers available, it’s important to understand what these service providers do and how they price their services.

You might be surprised to learn that the vast majority of dry cleaners, bridal boutiques and other service providers in the USA don’t clean, hand finish and archivally preserve the bridal gowns entrusted to their care.

Instead, they ship their gowns to a wholesale wedding gown processor for “cleaning and boxing.” There are about 10 such wholesale processors scattered around the country.

The following is an extract from the jargon-laden literature of a typical wholesale processor:
‍

"Our unique heirlooming process is carried out with the kind of care your priceless garment should have. So much time and professional care goes into the heirlooming process, we’d like you to know about it. When yo ur gown is received it is carefully examined for spots, stains and any necessary mending. Next, we spot clean all stains by hand with a special cleaning solution. The entire gown is now ready for cleaning in a multi-step process. The gown is then hung to air dry for 24 hours and examined again. Minor repairs are done to replace snaps, hooks, mend rips and seams, whatever is needed. Finishing work includes hand pressing and sizing. After a final, thorough inspection by specially trained personnel, the gown is placed on an adjustable body form stuffed with tissue and carefully folded. It is then sealed air-tight with clear film in a beautifully designed chest a viewing panel. You Deserve The Very Best.”
‍

Now comes the clincher: The total cost to your dry cleaner, bridal boutique or other service provider for this “unique heirlooming process” that involves “so much time and professional care”, “spot cleaning all stains by hand” and “hand pressing” is around $65 per gown!

Think about that for a second…

That $65 is an all inclusive cost.

It includes the above mentioned tasks – spot cleaning, multi-step dry cleaning, repairs, hand pressing, inspection and packaging. It includes the cost of the “beautifully designed chest.” It includes return shipping back to the service provider. And it includes the wholesale processor’s profit.

All of which begs the question: Is it possible to deliver all that for $65?

When a dry cleaner, bridal boutique or other service provider pays around $65 to have a bridal gown “cleaned and boxed”, they must know that the wholesale wedding gown processor cannot possibly deliver a clean gown – let alone deliver on all those tasks – for $65 and still make a profit.

They must also realize that the traditional storybook wedding gown box that’s being used by the wholesale wedding gown cleaner is about as functionally worthless as any white cardboard box that can be found in the dumpster behind your local supermarket.

So why do ordinary dry cleaners, bridal boutiques and other service providers continue to use wholesale wedding gown processors who use traditional storybook wedding gown boxes?

• First
  
  These service providers have little or no understanding of textile cleaning, finishing and preservation science. Sad, but true. You see, historically, textile preservation science has been, and, to a large degree, still remains, the domain of a few specialists: museum textile conservators and private-practice textile conservators. Dry cleaners, bridal boutiques and other service providers remain relatively uninformed about the preservation of textiles in general and bridal gowns in particular.‍

• Second
  
  These service providers don’t have the in-house skills, expertise and experience to clean and finish bridal gowns themselves. Besides, bridal gowns are a “hassle” for the vast majority of dry cleaners and merely interfere with their in by 9:00 am and out by 5:00 pm production focus.
  ‍‍
• Third
  
  These service providers can generate a profit with practically zero risk by merely acting as a middleman: They can charge $150 to $250 for a service that cost them about $65 (there’s zero risk to the service provider if you can never examine the condition of the gown because the box has been sealed).
  ‍‍
• Fourth
  
  The wholesale wedding gown processors used by these service providers are caught in a classic technology trap: they cannot introduce advanced preservation technologies without inviting close scrutiny of their current and past practices. How so? Because they would be tacitly admitting that hundreds of thousands of traditional storybook wedding gown boxes closeted in homes all across the USA are based on preservation technologies that were considered “state of the art” in the 1960s! Could it be that the potential for disappointing hundreds of thousands of past clients who have received “guaranteed stain removal” and “guaranteed preservation” (see below) is reason enough to continue promoting traditional storybook wedding gown boxes as the “finest in long-term protection” for your treasured bridal gown?

Pricing — gowns that are going to be resold

If you desire to resell your gown after the wedding or if you’re in the business of purchasing and reselling gowns, it's unlikely that we can meet your needs.

And the reason?

We have only one level of quality associated with the hand cleaning and hand finishing a gown (or any garment or household textile, for that matter). And we price our work accordingly.

This means that we do not offer a "just clean and press it so it doesn't look that bad" service.

The issue generally comes down to the difference between the resale price and the cost of purchase plus the cost of hand cleaning and hand finishing.

We thank you for your understanding.

E-Gift Cards

RAVE FabriCARE E-Gift Cards covering any of our bridal gown services are available in various denominations ranging from $25 to $500.

We regret but we cannot apply gift card towards the $300 deposit. You’re welcome to use any gift card to wholly or partially offset the remaining balance. If the amount of the gift card exceeds the remaining balance, the excess can be applied to any of our other services.

To purchase a E-Gift Card, please click on RAVE FabriCARE Gift Card at the footer of this page

Guarantees and warranties

Many service providers offer “guaranteed stain removal” and “guaranteed preservation”.

At Museum Quality GownCare, we always advise brides to consider these stain removal guarantees and preservation guarantees with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Here’s why……

As regards stain removal guarantees, only those cleaners who are uninformed and unskilled about the art and science of stain removal, would guarantee the removal of all spots and stains – in advance of completing the cleaning process. There are just too many variables involved to permit making such a blanket statement.

While perfection is always the goal, perfection may not always be fully achievable.

As a skilled cleaner of bridal gowns, we always strive to achieve the “very best possible result”, given the gown’s fabric, the trim and embellishments, the construction, and the nature and extent of the soiling.

The same healthy skepticism should be applied to preservation guarantees.

In this regard, this section of our website has attempted to provide you with answers to two important questions:

• Why preserve?
• What alternative preservation technologies are available?

Now you know that preservation is all about controlling the micro-environment in which your bridal gown is stored over the long term. And the “very best possible result” can only be achieved by simulating a climate-controlled environment in a technologically advanced bridal gown storage chest.

So, with this in mind, what’s the value of a 30 or 50 year “guarantee”?

Not much when you consider this simple fact: none of these “cleaning and boxing” or “heirlooming” service providers have been using their current cleaning processes and packaging methods for the full 30 or 50 year guaranteed period. So none of these service providers are in a position to have seen the results of their cleaning processes and packaging methods on gowns that have been stored for the full guaranteed period.

And what’s the value of a lifetime “guarantee”?

Not much when you ask yourself this question: What’s the meaning of the term “lifetime” and whose lifetime are they referring to?  Yours? The lifetime of your local dry cleaner? The lifetime of your local dry cleaner’s out-of-state subcontractor? And if it’s the lifetime of the gown, what the meaning of the term “lifetime of the gown”?

At Museum Quality GownCare, we take a different approach to these so-called “guarantees”: we prefer to offer scientifically informed advice and to guarantee that we’ll clean, hand finish and archivally preserve your cherished bridal gown with extraordinary care.

Other sentimental garments and household textiles

Museum Quality GownCare can also restore, clean, finish and preserve sentimental garments and textiles such as your daughter’s first dress, your son’s first baseball uniform, your mother’s needlepoint cushion covers, your father’s military uniform or your grandmother’s hand-crocheted table cloth, etc.

Summary

Our restoration, cleaning, and finishing processes are consistent with the very best conservation practices. Our preservation materials are the same ones used by the finest museums to protect and preserve their costume and textile collections.

Packaging a properly cleaned textile in archival materials is the most effective method to protect any textile from the deteriorating effects of light, soil and dust, mold and mildew, insects, airborne atmospheric (outdoor) and environmental (indoor) pollutant gases, and physical handling as well as from sharp fluctuations in temperature and relative humidity.

At Museum Quality GownCare, our approach to the conservation and preservation of garments and textiles is pure textile science.

Not ordinary cleaner myth.