Jim Nelson October 21, 2014
GQ Editor-in-Chief
The advice offered in your October article Don’t Get Taken to the Cleaners > The Smart Man’s Guide to Laundry would leave readers in the least GQ position possible: looking and smelling like a bum.
Not cleaning your clothes makes you stink. Not pressing them or ironing them makes you look like you slept on a park bench. We don’t want your readers to look and smell like bums.
As the world’s leading trade association for drycleaners and launderers, we worked with the U.S. government and military during World War II because drycleaning was considered “necessary and beneficial” to the war effort at home and abroad. Drycleaning kills disease-causing germs. Thus, we take particular offense to your calling our industry’s services “napalm for your clothes.”
Our research technicians drycleaned a wool suit 1,000 times to prove that drycleaning does not wear out garments. In fact, the suit lasted longer than the regularly-cleaned control piece. What is really bad for clothes is dirt that wears down fibers and causes them to tear over time. Cleaning takes the dirt out of your clothes so it is not abrading fibers and causing holes.
Cleaning a suit once a year is the best method we know to attract bugs to the fibers. Moths, silverfish and microscopic bugs feed on the sweat, sugars, and urine dribs that can get on suits. Men know that no one really has perfect aim. How will your readers feel when they discover holes in the crotches of their best suits on interview or board meeting day?
Washing jeans once every six months is one of the most disgusting things we’ve ever heard. Most jeans stink after the second wearing. What are you editors doing in these jeans? Sitting around in air-conditioned offices?
Whatever axe your writer had to grind against hard-working garment care professionals is beyond me. We can go through your item point-by-point and explain how the advice offered in this item is the exact opposite of what men should do if they want to look (and smell) like a GQ model. We can only surmise that this article was designed to keep people who don’t know better from getting ahead in business and romance.
Please contact us about any future articles you may wish to produce about clothing care. We’ve been in the business for 108 years and represent the world’s best clothing care professionals. The drycleaning process is far from the ripoff your article implies. Our Research, Analysis, Textile Testing and Education departments would be happy to help you produce an item that would serve GQ readers’ interests by providing sound advice on clothing care.
Sincerely,
Mary Scalco, CEO
Drycleaning & Laundry Institute
