They\u2019re leaving well-to-do customers high and dry.<\/p>\n
Madame Paulette, a luxury Midtown dry cleaning and wedding gown preservation service, has been slammed with dozens of allegations of losing high-ticket luxury items, including irreplaceable wedding dresses, The Post has learned.<\/p>\n
Influencer Claudia Li Johnson became one of the latest to sound the alarm this month after the shop reportedly lost her custom Vera Wang wedding dress while it was being preserved in 2021 \u2013 and said it couldn\u2019t find it four years later.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll never be able to give \u2026 my daughter my wedding dress,\u201d the stylist tearfully lamented in a TikTok video posted Sept. 19. \u201cIt\u2019s not even like I can replace the dress, it holds significant sentimental value.\u201d<\/p>\n
Madame Paulette\u2019s West 39th Street location in Midtown, Manhattan. Matthew McDermott<\/p>\n
The influencer\u2019s experience mirrors multiple scathing reports of missing or damaged high-end garments that landed the luxury service an average 2.6 stars<\/a> on Yelp and an \u2018F\u2019 rating from the Better Business Bureau<\/a>.<\/p>\n Even the likes of Fendi have complained about missing items, with the Italian designer suing the service last year for losing a $110,000 dark-blue chinchilla coat and a $22,900 mink bomber coat.<\/p>\n A Greenwich, Conn. woman won a $31,000 judgement against the company in April after it allegedly destroyed her custom-designed Italian drapes \u2013 and reportedly reneged its promise to replace them.<\/p>\n Kam Saifi, the CEO of parent company ByNext \u2014 which acquired Madame Paulette in 2021 after it filed for bankruptcy \u2014 told The Post the latter complaint was \u201cout of our control\u201d as the custom drapes\u2019 fibers were already ruined by sun exposure and further deteriorated under chemical treatment.<\/p>\n Saifi added the Fendi lawsuit \u201cconcerns contractual obligations of the prior ownership,\u201d and, like the swath of other complaints that predate the merger, \u201cis unrelated to our current operations.\u201d<\/p>\n But more than a dozen individual complaints claiming lost or damaged high-end pieces have been made since, according to a Post analysis of online reports.<\/p>\n Claudia Li Johnson sent her Vera Wang wedding gown to be cleaned and preserved by Madame Paulette in 2021. TikTok\/@claudialijohnson<\/p>\n \u201cIn 2021, I gave Madame Paulette $30,000 worth of clothing \u2014 I HAVE NEVER SEEN IT SINCE,\u201d one Yelp reviewer wrote. In another instance, an Upper East Side woman claimed the service inexplicably \u201cruined\u201d her bright pink Valentino dress \u2013 and turned the gown stark white.\u00a0<\/p>\n Other Yelp reviews have reported wedding dresses delivered to the wrong bride, mysterious blood stains on a wedding dress and even a worker offering a customer to \u201ctake home\u201d an unclaimed belt.<\/p>\n Complaints to the Better Business Bureau dating back to 2022 detail a missing vintage Christian Dior dress, a wedding dress and veil returned to the wrong customer and a \u201cvintage historical fashion garment\u201d destroyed after it came into contact with \u201cinappropriate chemicals.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey did very little to look for my dress,\u201d one complaint alleges, \u201cand I think it\u2019s very suspicious and weird that so many people\u2019s clothes go missing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The Post could not independently verify the Yelp or Better Business Bureau reviews, which Saifi described as representing \u201ca small percentage\u201d of the work done at the luxe cleaners. <\/p>\n \u201cWith any business that provides services, things happen, and when you measure that as a percentage of the work \u2026 this is less than a fraction of 1%,\u201d Saifi said.<\/p>\n While he admitted some \u201citems have been misdelivered,\u201d other instances have resulted in \u201cmissing\u201d items being found already in a customers\u2019 closet or put away elsewhere by their swanky clientele\u2019s own staff.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes it runs out of our control,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Claudia Li Johnson\u2019s wedding dress was found this week inside the Madame Paulette warehouse, according to a company rep, who shared a photo of the dress with The Post. Obtained by the NY Post<\/p>\n Within hours of The Post sending an inquiry to the company last week regarding Li Johnson\u2019s long-disappeared dress, a rep provided photos of the gown and said the garment was \u201cin our climate controlled storage which was just brought to the store to be delivered to Ms. Li.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAt the time they were integrating the company into our facilities, unfortunately what happened was the name tag was dropped,\u201d Saifi recalled.<\/p>\n \u201cThroughout our history, we have consistently maintained the highest standards of care, integrity, and customer service,\u201d a company rep told The Post. Matthew McDermott<\/p>\n When things \u201cescalated\u201d on social media, he said workers were ordered to do a \u201ccomplete sweep\u201d of the 70,000-square-foot warehouse \u2014 and found a \u201cfew items that didn\u2019t have names on them,\u201d including Li\u2019s gown.<\/p>\n Li Johnson didn\u2019t respond to multiple requests for comment.<\/p>\n \u201cThis issue is universal \u2013 even a basic dry cleaner goes through this challenge,\u201d Saifi refuted, adding that \u201cwe categorically deny renting, reselling, or otherwise misusing any customer property\u201d as hypothesized by some critics online.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThroughout our history, we have consistently maintained the highest standards of care, integrity, and customer service.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They\u2019re leaving well-to-do customers high and dry. Madame Paulette, a luxury Midtown dry cleaning and wedding gown preservation…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":264170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,23986,138064,13089,5249,5248,17833,405,403,7619,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,1154,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-264169","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-better-business-bureau","10":"tag-fendi","11":"tag-luxury","12":"tag-manhattan","13":"tag-metro","14":"tag-midtown","15":"tag-new-york","16":"tag-new-york-city","17":"tag-new-york-city-life","18":"tag-newyork","19":"tag-newyorkcity","20":"tag-ny","21":"tag-nyc","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-united-states-of-america","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","26":"tag-us","27":"tag-us-news","28":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115288395316430894","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}