A high-end dry cleaner who's scrubbed wine out of a $500,000 Chanel wedding dress reveals what it's like to clean up the bloody, vomit-y messes of wealthy New Yorkers
- No matter how rich you are, you're bound to spill red wine on your clothes at some point.
- A dry cleaner for wealthy New Yorkers says he once had to clean a red wine spill out of a $500,000 Chanel wedding dress.
- Jerry Pozniak, owner of luxury laundry service Jeeves New York, shared some of his wildest stories with The Cut's Bridget Read.
- Pozniak has also had clients bring in a $25,000 wedding gown ruined by mold and another garment mysteriously drenched in blood.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Jerry Pozniak, owner of luxury laundry service Jeeves New York, has seen a lot in his 33 years of doing the dry cleaning of wealthy New Yorkers.
Pozniak, whose services start at $35 for a tie and can go upwards of $200 per item to clean fur coats and handbags, shared some of his wildest stories with The Cut's Bridget Read. Some of his clients are celebrities who use pseudonyms, while others are heiresses of foreign billionaires.
"All of our clients have fantastic wardrobes," Pozniak told The Cut. "But the stains are the same ones everyone has."
Common stains include red wine, food, blood, urine, vomit, and makeup, and some people lie about the more embarrassing ones, he said.
Pozniak's "number one craziest story" from his years in the business is about how a young woman ruined her $25,000 Oscar de la Renta wedding dress.
"They were on an island, and the photographer talked her into wading into the water for photos," he told The Cut. "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."
Over the years, Pozniak has seen some truly outrageous dry cleaning emergencies. Here are some of the wildest cases he's had to deal with:
- The daughter of a Hong Kong billionaire spilled red wine on a custom $500,000 Chanel wedding gown. It was a "painstaking process," Pozniak said, but he managed to get it out.
- A client in Palm Beach fell down and injured herself at a party and brought in a garment that was so drenched in blood it "looked like something out of 'Dexter.'"
- One bride refused to pick up her cleaned wedding gown four months after the wedding because the marriage didn't last.
- Another client cried "hysterically" over underarm stains that couldn't be removed from a designer silk dress.
- Some clients have lied about the source of embarrassing stains, claiming it's vanilla ice cream for "stains of an amorous nature" and chocolate ice cream for other unmentionable stains.
Pozniak isn't the only one who's had to go above and beyond for affluent clients.
Jack Ezon, the president of high-end honeymoon planning company Ovation Vacations, has planned ultra-luxurious honeymoons that cost up to $1.85 million dollars, as Business Insider's Hillary Hoffower previously reported. Some of the most over-the-top requests he's fulfilled include stocking a minibar with 16 different types of condoms for a new husband, rebuilding a Caribbean beach in front of a couple's villa after it was destroyed by a storm for $50,000, and setting up a meet-and-greet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
And nannies caring for the children of rich New Yorkers have been asked to style the whole family's hair and give them massages, teach family yoga classes, and even drive Zambonis on private ice-skating rinks.