Suede & Leather Cleaners in Hackney

Looking for suede and leather cleaners in Hackney gets complicated by the fact that almost nobody on the high street actually does the work themselves. We do. The bench is in Edmonton, straight up the A10 from Dalston, and the borough is inside the area our van covers, E5 and E8 through to N16 and the N1 end. A piece is collected from your door, priced only after somebody has handled it, cleaned in our own unit and brought back to you.

Getting something ready to sell

Hackney resells more clothing than anywhere else we collect from. Between the market stalls, the vintage shops along Kingsland Road and Mare Street, and the volume of selling that happens through phone apps, a lot of what we clean here is being cleaned to be passed on rather than to be worn.

That changes the question, because now the cleaning has to earn its money back. A few honest rules:

• Condition is most of the listing. Shine on a collar, a grey cast on pale suede and a marked lining are all visible in photographs, and buyers price them in whether or not they mention them.
• Smell is what gets things returned. A buyer cannot smell a listing. They can smell the parcel, and a musty leather jacket is the most common reason a sale comes back.
• Clean before you photograph, not after you list. Rephotographing a cleaned piece is the whole point, and the difference on pale suede in particular is usually obvious in the pictures.
• It is not always worth it. On a low-value piece with worn-through corners or a perished lining, the cleaning can cost more than the sale returns. We would rather say so than take the job.

The same logic runs the other way for anything you buy second hand and intend to keep.

Buying leather second hand: what to look at first

Markets and vintage rails are full of leather and shearling that has spent years somewhere cold. Before you hand over money, check the things that cleaning cannot alter:

1. Flex the folds. Cracking at the elbows, the collar fold or across the back means the finish has split. Cleaning and feeding will not close that.
2. Look inside. A lining that tears when you pull it gently is perished. It is replaceable, but that is a repair cost on top of the price.
3. Check the underarms and the seat of a coat, and the seams of anything shearling. That is where moth damage shows up first, and holes do not close.
4. Smell it properly. Musty is usually treatable. Smoke and damp that has gone right through a sheepskin is harder work.
5. Press the hide. Leather that feels like card rather than skin has dried out badly, and while a lot of that does come back with cleaning and re-oiling, the very worst does not.

Stiffness, dirt and a dull surface are the problems worth taking on, because those are exactly what leather garment cleaning and suede, sheepskin and shearling work on. Structural damage is a different conversation, and often a repair before anything else.

Trainers

Hackney sends us more trainers than any other kind of footwear. Some are being made ready to sell, some are being brought back from a summer of festivals and towpaths, and a good number are worth more than the jacket that came with them.

The thing worth knowing is that an expensive pair is rarely one material. Suede, mesh, printed panels and sealed leather can all appear on one upper, side by side, and each wants handling its own way. That is why a single all-purpose kit ruins so many pairs. Our piece on designer trainer cleaning goes through it properly, and the work itself sits under shoes, boots and designer trainers.

Warehouse flats, canal damp and unheated studios

The eastern side of the borough, around Hackney Wick and Fish Island, is full of converted industrial space, and much of the rest is Victorian terrace divided into flats. Both are hard on leather in the same way: cold rooms, solid walls, no through draught, and clothes stored in whatever corner is left.

What arrives from those addresses is predictable. Surface mould on a jacket that has hung against an outside wall. A shearling coat that smells of the room it was kept in. Suede that has stiffened after a winter in an unheated studio. All three are treatable, and all three are easier the sooner they come in, because growth and odour both settle further the longer they sit.

Two things help more than any product. Get anything leather off an outside wall and give it space either side, and never store it in the zip-up plastic covers sold for the purpose, which hold moisture against the surface. Where a smell has already gone into a lining, that is dealt with separately through ozone treatment rather than by cleaning harder.

Markets, marshes and towpaths

Saturday in this borough is spent outdoors. Broadway Market, Ridley Road, Chatsworth Road, the Regent's Canal towpath, London Fields and the Marshes all produce the same two jobs for us.

The first is rain on suede, which dries as a tide mark rather than a clean wet patch. The fix is counterintuitive: treating the whole panel evenly rather than dabbing at the ring is what stops the edge showing.

The second is towpath and marsh mud, which is fine, wet and finds its way down between the fibres. Wiping at it while it is still soft is what drives it deeper, so leave it until it has gone hard and crumbly, then break it away with a dry brush. How to clean suede shoes at home covers where that stops being a job for a brush and a bit of patience.

Collection across the borough

Hackney is spread over more postcodes than most people realise, and every one of them is covered:

• E5 Clapton and the Lea Bridge end
• E8 Dalston, London Fields and Hackney Central
• E9 Homerton, Victoria Park and Hackney Wick
• N16 Stoke Newington and Stamford Hill
• N1 De Beauvoir and the Hoxton side
• E2 and the EC2A fringe around Shoreditch

Costs are simple. Collection and return are included when an order totals £50 or more. Below that figure, one £10 charge covers both journeys, however many pieces go in the bag. Bringing things to the workshop yourself costs nothing at all.

If your door sits behind a shared entrance or above a shop, tell us which buzzer when you book. Handing over to a neighbour or to the shop downstairs works fine where that saves you waiting in.

Dropping something off yourself

The unit is at Unit F23a, Hastingwood Trading Estate, 35 Harbet Road, London N18 3HU. It opens on weekdays only, 9am until 3pm, never at weekends or on bank holidays. Ring 0208 981 3232 first so somebody is expecting you.

From most of Hackney it is the A10 nearly all the way, the road that begins as Kingsland Road and carries on through Stoke Newington and Tottenham, then a left turn at Angel Road.

Anywhere beyond the van route is served just as well by the tracked postal service, which is set up for exactly that.