Consuming Interest
Suitable Service
By LESLIE ADRIAN Timm' the soldier-servant still survives in the Army, the per- sonal valet hardly exists any longer. Valetry, however, is still with us. The care of clothes is something which is done by valet services. In a country where the standard of cleaning is so low they are especially valuable.
The service usually takes-the form of free col- lection and delivery, removal of dust, hand cleaning, minor repairs to buttons, buttonholes, seams, linings and pockets, reshaping and press- ing. Payment is by annual subscription.
University Tailors (Heldon Works, SW8) are probably the oldest and best known. They do a town service (within twenty miles of Charing Cross) and a country service (anywhere in Eng- ' land, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland) on three scales. Scale 1 • costs 30 gns. a year in the town service for one suit (or equivalent) every week; Scale 2 costs 17 gns. for one suit every fortnight and Scale 3 costs 9 gns. for one suit every month. The country service costs 32 gns., 18 gns. or 91 gns. a year and is done by post. Boxes, labels and certificate of posting (which saves you registering) are supplied.
A suit means a two- or three-piece lounge suit, a morning coat suit, a dinner-jacket suit or a sports suit. An overcoat, two pairs of trousers, a lady's costume or coat are each taken to be the equivalent of a suit.
Sycamore of Old Town, SW4, do a valet service in the London area, bounded approximately by Acton, Kingston, Elstree and Streatham, and they are less expensive. They do their costing on a unit basis. Trousers, jackets, cardigans, skirts and blouses are each valued at one unit; suits (two- or three-piece), overcoats, day dresses and dressing gowns are valued at two units. Sycamore's service costs 6 gns. a year for two units every month, 11 gns. for two units every fortnight and 20 gns. for two units every week.
University Tailors are more expensive, but they specialise in personal attention, cover the whole country and concentrate their 'energies on a valet service alone. Sycamore cost less, deliver in three to four days rather than a week, only cover the London area and are also launderers and cleaners.
is it possible to have a valet (soldier-servant style) call at one's home? I've not been able to find one, though I know that this kind of service has been tried. Usually, these attempts have failed mainly because labour costs are high: it is very difficult to control the work done and the time spent on the job.
Odd-job men occasionally call at houses and flats offering to do a valet service in the home, but 1 advise against your accepting it.„This kind of service cannot be done with anything like the range of equipment that would be available at a works where an extensive service is provided. Cleaning fluids are used to save time and these sometimes cause colours to fade and stains to be 'fixed' rather than removed so that, when you do send your clothes to a cleaner or a valet service, the colours cannot he restored and the stains can- not be removed without damaging the cloth.
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Cyril Ray writes : One result of the decline in after-dinner port-drinking is that the ,port- shippers are making more of a song about serv- ing their dryish white ports, chilled, as aperitifs. They have been meeting with enough success for Cockburns to he able to bring down the price of their 'Dry 'Tang' sixpence a bottle to 20s. This, incidentally, is a good example of the type : it is about as dry as a medium dry sherry though fruitier in flavour, as is the nature of the wine. Sandemans, who are famous for their sherries, too, and so know all about aperitifs, sell their 'Clipper' white port at 19s., and find that some of their customers have taken to chilling the I9s. 'Picador,' which isn't a white port at all but .a dry tawny, and makes a softer and richer, but equally appetising, before-dinner drink. Two very dis- tinguished port-shippers indeed, Taylors and Crofts, are marketing 'Chip Dry' and 'Porto Fino' respectively, the one at 22s., the other at I7s. 6d. The Taylor is older and 'bigger.' the Croft lighter and perhaps a little drier. I don't dunk I should like to drink white port every day of my life, but it's nice to have a bottle in the house as a change from sherry or dry madeira, and the sound wines I've mentioned are doing a lot to remove the old reproach that white port was merely a wine 'for the ladies.'
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