Susan McManigal is serious about clothes.
As the owner of French Hand Laundry and Drycleaners in
Pasadena, CA, she sees more than her share of garments, and
yet, she considers each one to be alive.
“A textile is a living
organism,” she explained. “They really have a life
all of their own. They have their own natural moisture to them
that has to be replenished. They need to be rehydrated so you
can put that moisture back in so that the fibers can get their
tensile back.”
In order for Susan’s company to
achieve the best possible quality every time, each article of
clothing has to be studied, analyzed and processed in the
manner that best suits it.
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All of the extra effort is a reflection of
the company’s philosophy which has helped it thrive for
90 years.
“Our focus is to keep that garment
in your wardrobe as long as possible,” she emphasized.
“You have an investment in your garment and we want that
investment to work for you.”
Of course, some investments are more
costly than others. While French Hand handles a little of
everything, the business is widely known for its impeccable
work on fine designer and antique clothing, including vintage
family heirlooms.
“I get some exquisite pieces,”
Susan noted. “We’ve done linens from Eleanor
Roosevelt’s trousseau and Elvis Presley’s
jumpsuits... Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland from Wizard of Oz
and Meet Me in St. Louis, Charlie Chaplin, Yul Brynner.
It’s endless. They come from museums. They come from
Hollywood.”
Some of the older, rarer garments often
prove difficult to process.
“We address each piece individually
and make a decision to work on it based on its needs,”
she said. “With the antique pieces, many times it may
take weeks to just to try to get a history on the piece,
knowing its condition, stabilizing it to the environment of
today because many times it has been taken out of an
environment that they’ve nested in for maybe 50 to 75
years.”
Naturally, most of those older garments
are virtually priceless. How do you set a value on a
christening dress that has been in the same family for a
century-and-a-half or an iconic Hollywood costume from a
beloved 1930s film? Working on such treasures demands a
cautious touch.
“There are some pieces that,
literally, I keep with me all of the time so I can evaluate
them,” Susan said. “When I start a piece — I
know it sounds silly — but you have to develop a
relationship with it before you even get started so that you
know exactly how it’s going to react. I had one piece
that I actually spent a year on — a whole
year.”
The garment was a graduation dress that
had belonged to a client’s grandmother. It dated back to
the early 1900s.
“It had been tossed about and the
woman had allowed her children — when they were young
— to play dress-up in it,” Susan explained.
“There really hadn’t been much care to it. Pieces
of lace were just disintegrating before your eyes. You
couldn’t touch it, it was so brittle. So, we talked about
it quite a bit. I told her I don’t know how it’s
going to react. After a year of rehydrating, we were finally
able to actually immerse it and soak it. We brought it back to
its original state. It’s not something that can be worn.
It’s too fragile for that, but it is on
display.”
Susan found the experience very rewarding,
but believes she couldn’t have restored the dress without
its cooperation. “I was very proud of the piece for
letting something be done with it other than just ending up in
a brown bag in the back of somebody’s closet,” she
added.
In order to work on vintage clothing, it
helps to have a well-rounded knowledge of the history of
fashion. Fortunately for Susan, her work is also one of her
hobbies. She keeps her own private library containing several
dozen fashion reference books and she has spent years
collecting antique textiles just in case a need for them
arises.
“I had one christening dress where
the sleeve was just completely shredded and there was no way of
repairing it,” she recalled. “I was able to go back
into my box of goodies and duplicate the fabric for our ladies
who made a new sleeve for the dress. They didn’t destroy
the integrity of it because I was using a piece of fabric that
was from the same time frame as the dress itself.”
The oldest garment that Susan ever worked
on was a “sampler” from the 1700s. Sampling was a
common practice for young girls at the time.
“Generally, it would be done on a
piece of linen,” she said. “They would embroider
the alphabet. They would embroider numbers... 1, 2, 3, 4
through 10. They would usually put prose in there, some saying
or verse from the Bible. Then it would have their age and name.
When they got to be ten years old, the next piece of
significance that they would do would be called a lingerie
dress. They would use very fine cotton — almost like lawn
— and they would incorporate their embroidery and
stitching skills. They would make their own patterns. They
would do fagoting. They would do laces. They would incorporate
fine pin tucking. It was uniquely an American custom.
I’ve done some that were absolute works of
art.”
The high standards practiced by French
Hand were present even at the company’s inception in 1914
when it was founded by Marie and Albert Cottaze.
The McManigal family first became involved
in the business when Susan’s mother, Virginia, came
aboard in the mid-1970s. Prior to joining French Hand, she had
accumulated over ten years of drycleaning experience.
Susan had some, as well. “From the
time I could see over the counter, I was helping
customers,” she recalled. “I would also make
hangers and brush sweaters and do all of the background type
work.”
Susan spent a lot of time alongside her
mother at work in large part because her father passed away
when she was very young. Luckily, the family’s home was
never a sad or empty place.
“I was very fortunate,” Susan
said. “My grandmother lived with us while I was growing
up. I was raised in a very caring family environment. I had
lots of uncles and aunts. I had a great family. Everybody was
around us and it was a great way to grow up.”
During high school, she held many
responsibilities at French Hand, including the handling of the
books.
“I began taking over some of the
bookkeeping — in the sense of putting out monthly
statements and that type of paperwork,” Susan said.
“It just happened that one of the girls who was doing
that took ill and it had to be done. I was the likely person to
step in.”
After graduation, Susan attended USC,
majoring in philosophy. She had aspirations of going to law
school instead of working at French Hand. However, she was
haunted by a nagging doubt that began when she took a law
course as an undergraduate student.
“I had a professor who asked me a
very pointed question: If I knew someone was guilty, would I be
able to defend them?” she recalled. “It was a
question that I had a real problem in answering because of my
morals and values.”
As that was going on, French Hand faced
another sudden vacancy. The staff accountant was unexpectedly
rushed to the hospital for open heart surgery.
“Steve was out for about three years
in recovery,” Susan said. “He survived and lived
for many, many years later, but at the time he was admitted to
the hospital on a Friday afternoon and on Monday morning we had
payroll.”
Once again, Susan was the best option to
fill in, even if she had no accounting experience.
“Fortunately, we had a very dear
next door neighbor who I fondly called ‘Uncle Nick’
and he was an accountant. He took me under his wing and taught
me how to do all of the corporate books. I learned to do
payroll and quarterlies and corporate taxes and year-ends
— all of that type of work.”
As Susan became more involved with the
business, she became more fascinated by it. Since she still
didn’t have an answer to her law professor’s
question, she committed to French Hand for the long haul.
Last December, Virginia passed away after
working a half century in the drycleaning industry. Susan
enjoyed a very close relationship with her mother over the
years, and the memory of her dedication continues to inspire
French Hand’s 30 employees.
“She was highly respected in the
community, as well as with the employees,” Susan noted.
“We all miss her, and, at the same time, carry on with
her in mind in honor of what she had started. I think, if
anything, we’re all just working harder to keep all of
those values and standards as high as they possibly can
be.”
While Susan misses her mother, she’s
not worried about the future of the family business.
“I’m just from a very strong
line of women and have been very fortunate to be in a line of
business that I really enjoy,” she said. “I’m
learning something every single day.”
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