There is an extravagance of cleanliness located just behind an unremarkable door in a corner of the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
This is home to Kingbridge’s huge new cleaning facility, which opened in January 2020. A meticulous, highly intensive process takes place there, which Mr Aviles believes is essential to properly cleaning clothes.
He learned the trade when he was 5, when his mother, Victoria – who still helps run the decades-old family business – dressed him in a suit and brought him to work on Saturdays. He offered customers hot chocolate in the winter and lemonade in the summer and soon learned to press shirts himself.
Today, workers pile dirty shirts — unsightly with faded collars, cut buttons and sweat stains — into a giant bin to be manually sorted by color and condition. They are then placed in a wet or dry cleaning machine or hand cleaned if the condition is dire.
Each garment is then checked to ensure that it does not need a second cleaning. If all goes well, workers hit the shirts in a dryer, set up next to giant exhaust fans that blow out the steam. If the machine detects a risk of shrinkage, it will stop abruptly and open its door to let in cooler air.
An employee and a machine then work in concert to ensure that each shirt’s collar is ironed and the cuffs are pressed. The machine spins the shirts every few seconds, in a perfectly timed waltz. Hot air is forced through the sleeves of the shirt, giving the impression, for a few seconds, that it has burst into life.
Two workers then inspect each garment and use hand irons suspended on ropes from the ceiling to deal with any remaining creases. Another employee, known as a packer, puts plastic snaps under the collar to keep it rigid, wraps the shirt around a hanger and then drapes it in a garment cover, which Mr. Aviles hopes customers will keep. to prevent dust accumulation.
None of this is cheap.
Professional laundry maintenance was one of the first things to do when the pandemic hit and most New Yorkers were suddenly confined to their apartments. Practically overnight, Kingbridge Cleaners & Tailors saw its business plummet, down 93 per cent on the previous year.
Mr. Aviles went without a salary for about two years, when the entire industry essentially shut down. Kingbridge’s sales are still about 15 percent lower than they were in 2019, he said, as many office workers spend at least part of the week in sweatshirts instead of suits.
Running a cleaning business in 2023, he said, means “even though we’re not making money, if we can break even, then we’re staying ahead of the game.”
He tries to maintain that optimism even when a customer complains about a stubborn stain and grants a discount or refund.
He sees cleaners around him going out of business keeping their prices the same for years and losing too much money too quickly. But Mr. Aviles was careful not to raise his prices too much: A washed shirt costs a customer about 10 percent more today than it did before the pandemic.
For Mr. Aviles, it’s easy to feel sad about the days when working New Yorkers might visit their cleaners once a week or more. She knows money is tight and keeping clothes perfectly cleaned and pressed isn’t always a top priority. But he wants his neighbors to know that keeping their wardrobes fresh is worth it.
“It’s less expensive to maintain your wardrobe and do it right,” she said, “than to go out and buy disposable fashion.”
Produced by Eden Weingart, Andrew Hinderaker and Dagny Salas. Development by Gabriel Gianordoli and Aliza Aufrichtig.
