All Dolled Up : Cleaner Restores Barbie, Madame Alexander Outfits to Royal-T Status

W ould Barbie ever go out in a soiled evening gown? No chance, says Michael Brief, the man behind Royal-T Cleaners & Laundry in Fountain Valley, which specializes in removing grime from dolls’ clothes.

OK, stop snickering. He’s received teeny outfits in the mail from as far as Alaska and Tennessee. And since he sent a message on the Internet, he’s been swamped by inquiries about the cost of cleaning Barbie’s wedding dress ($5). “I’m the first cleaner to go into cyberspace,” Brief says. “I reach out much farther than the two-mile radius that most cleaners rely on.”

Once received, the micro-duds are pre-spotted and examined for missing buttons or bows. Then they’re cleaned, pressed and hung onto 2 1/2-inch plastic hangers in assorted pastel colors. Finally, they’re wrapped in acid-free tissue paper, boxed and shipped back.

This is another in a series of first-person columns that allow people connected to the fashion industry to talk about their encounters.

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I started cleaning doll clothes years ago when my daughters inherited my wife’s Barbie dolls from the early ‘60s. Then, coincidentally, one or two customers brought in Ken outfits, and it seemed like it would be a good idea to specialize.

I found out that there are major doll collectors. They’re second only to stamp and coin folks. People who collect dolls break it down into large groups, such as Barbies, Madame Alexander, Raggedy Ann. This is a very serious group of hobbyists. Some collect for investment value, but with dolls, there’s a high E-content. By that I mean emotional content. I handle these doll clothes very carefully, because I know they were passed down from a great-aunt who brought them over from Sweden. They are family heirlooms, a piece of their childhood.

I’m looking at a Madame Alexander Snow White outfit now that a lady brought in. It went through four hand baths because it was stained and pretty nasty. But she’ll be delighted with how it came out.

My motto is: “Her clothes get dirty too.” They get left out on display or someone with sticky fingers touches them.

The obvious difference between doll clothes and people clothes is the size, but in all respect to current fashion, I find the quality of the doll clothes, certainly with the older clothes, is better. The stitching, fabrication and quality of the fabric is better.

I’d rather handle a Madame Alexander dress from the ‘50s than a woman’s dress bought at a discounter today that has a label that says “dry clean,” and yet when you do, the buttons melt. The quality is bad, the dye lot sad. These are the nightmares of our business. The reason cleaners get bad raps is because of a lack of quality control (by) the manufacturers.

Another difference is that the process of cleaning doll clothes is much more time-consuming, because I’m conscious of the E-content. I screen the outfit to see if it can handle dry-cleaning or water. And I do all the cleaning on the premises.

There’s also more work involved for our pressers. But they are great and have gotten used to pressing these items to make them look almost new. You don’t want them to look precisely new, not if it’s a 40-year-old outfit.

I wrap the items in acid-free tissue paper, and now I get requests to buy the paper from people who own vintage clothes and want them protected. That side of the business is developing a life of its own. Another offshoot of this business is dry-cleaning vintage clothes. People bring in things like a dress circa 1920 or a little boy’s cowboy outfit from the ‘40, some classy things.

I also do other specialty cleaning. I clean suspenders with leather fasteners or brass buttons and other difficult items, such as baseball caps. I’ve been asked to do dog clothes, and maybe downstream I will, but first I have to find out about the health considerations. And so far, no Martian outfits.