BLANC began on George Street in Marylebone in 2013, as a single counter and a conviction that dry cleaning did not have to mean PERC, heat damage, and clothes coming back smelling faintly of a chemical the customer never asked about.

The early studio ran on the same two principles that still shape every studio we have opened since: judge each garment individually rather than running everything through the same cycle, and choose cleaning methods for what they do to the fabric, not for what is fastest or cheapest to run. Liquid CO2 cleaning was still unusual in London at the time. We adopted it early, and it remains the method we reach for wherever a garment’s fabric and finish allow it.

Growth followed slowly and deliberately rather than quickly. Notting Hill was the second studio, followed by Chelsea – home to what became our dedicated Bridal Studio – and then South Kensington. Each new studio was built around the same specialists and the same standards as George Street, rather than opening a new location and hoping the quality would follow.

What has not changed since 2013 is what happens behind the till: every garment is still inspected individually before a cleaning method is chosen, every repair is still assessed by a specialist rather than quoted from a price list alone, and PERC has never been used in any of our four studios, then or now.

We are often asked what has changed most since George Street. The honest answer is very little about how the clothes are treated – only how many of them we can look after well in a day.