They’re leaving well-to-do customers high and dry.
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.
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 – and said it couldn’t find it four years later.
“I’ll never be able to give … my daughter my wedding dress,” the stylist tearfully lamented in a TikTok video posted Sept. 19. “It’s not even like I can replace the dress, it holds significant sentimental value.”
The influencer’s experience mirrors multiple scathing reports of missing or damaged high-end garments that landed the luxury service an average 2.6 stars on Yelp and an ‘F’ rating from the Better Business Bureau.
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.
A Greenwich, Conn. woman won a $31,000 judgement against the company in April after it allegedly destroyed her custom-designed Italian drapes – and reportedly reneged its promise to replace them.
Kam Saifi, the CEO of parent company ByNext — which acquired Madame Paulette in 2021 after it filed for bankruptcy — told The Post the latter complaint was “out of our control” as the custom drapes’ fibers were already ruined by sun exposure and further deteriorated under chemical treatment.
Saifi added the Fendi lawsuit “concerns contractual obligations of the prior ownership,” and, like the swath of other complaints that predate the merger, “is unrelated to our current operations.”
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.
“In 2021, I gave Madame Paulette $30,000 worth of clothing — I HAVE NEVER SEEN IT SINCE,” one Yelp reviewer wrote. In another instance, an Upper East Side woman claimed the service inexplicably “ruined” her bright pink Valentino dress – and turned the gown stark white.
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 “take home” an unclaimed belt.
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 “vintage historical fashion garment” destroyed after it came into contact with “inappropriate chemicals.”
“They did very little to look for my dress,” one complaint alleges, “and I think it’s very suspicious and weird that so many people’s clothes go missing.”
The Post could not independently verify the Yelp or Better Business Bureau reviews, which Saifi described as representing “a small percentage” of the work done at the luxe cleaners.
“With any business that provides services, things happen, and when you measure that as a percentage of the work … this is less than a fraction of 1%,” Saifi said.
While he admitted some “items have been misdelivered,” other instances have resulted in “missing” items being found already in a customers’ closet or put away elsewhere by their swanky clientele’s own staff.
“Sometimes it runs out of our control,” he added.
Within hours of The Post sending an inquiry to the company last week regarding Li Johnson’s long-disappeared dress, a rep provided photos of the gown and said the garment was “in our climate controlled storage which was just brought to the store to be delivered to Ms. Li.”
“At the time they were integrating the company into our facilities, unfortunately what happened was the name tag was dropped,” Saifi recalled.
When things “escalated” on social media, he said workers were ordered to do a “complete sweep” of the 70,000-square-foot warehouse — and found a “few items that didn’t have names on them,” including Li’s gown.
Li Johnson didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.
“This issue is universal – even a basic dry cleaner goes through this challenge,” Saifi refuted, adding that “we categorically deny renting, reselling, or otherwise misusing any customer property” as hypothesized by some critics online.
“Throughout our history, we have consistently maintained the highest standards of care, integrity, and customer service.”
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