Tottenham hideaway where top designers freshen up: Roger Tredre visits Jeeves of Belgravia, dry cleaners to the Royal Family

IF YOU were looking for the finest array of contemporary fashion in London, where would be the best place to start? Not Harvey Nichols, nor Browns of South Molton Street, but the less-than- beautiful Tottenham factory/head office of Jeeves of Belgravia, the upmarket dry cleaner.

Half a million garments a year pass through this dry-cleaning emporium, the largest of its kind in Europe. The manager marched me along row after row of designer clothing: glitzy Escada jackets, sharp Mugler suits, drapey Calvin Klein trousers, immaculate Savile Row tailoring, spectacular ballgowns by Tomasz Starzewski, wedding dresses worth a year's salary, and - a celestial vision for a tabloid journalist - a rack of garments from the Palace, marked simply 'Royal'.

Each piece has a story to tell: the Maxmara coat that had a close encounter with a bottle of red wine; the Paul Costelloe jacket that went out in a storm; the wedding dress dragged through the churchyard mud.

We all have a nightmare story or two about a favourite garment ruined by a dry cleaner. The average high-street dry cleaner may well possess perfectly decent dry- cleaning machines, but the people who operate them are sometimes less than perfect. They are not helped in their task by incorrect labelling on garments, or by the ill-judged efforts of their customers to have a go at doing the job for themselves.

Linda Scandrett, an expert spot cleaner at Jeeves, offered this advice: 'If you spill anything on your clothes, don't rub it] It's the friction that often damages the fabric more than anything. Sandwich the fabric between white kitchen towels and squeeze. And don't add anything to it; leave that to us.'

Straightforward dry cleaning is not always the correct solution. White wine spilt on an evening dress hardly shows when it dries, but will re-emerge as a stain after dry cleaning, unless it has been pre-treated. Water-based stains need water-based cleaning, so coffee spilt on a silk tie needs gentle washing rather than dry cleaning. Egg stains also need treating before dry cleaning, to stop the heat of the machine cooking the egg and producing a disastrous fibre- omelette mix.

Dry cleaning is well suited for oil-based stains, such as make-up or grease. The machines at Jeeves are imported from Germany: they look like giant washing machines, but are fed with solvent rather than water. After cleaning, the clothes are whisked over to pressing machines that pump up the fabric with steam and press it methodically into shape. The pressers take four minutes on a pair of wool trousers; a linen jacket may take up to half an hour.

This kind of expertise does not come cheap: a silk blouse costs from pounds 9.50, a suede jacket from pounds 46, an evening gown from pounds 59. But if it means the difference between prolonged life and banishment to the back of the wardrobe for a favourite piece of clothing, it is money well spent.

Jeeves of Belgravia branches include 8-10 Pont Street, London SW1; 271 Kensington High Street, W8; 80 Moorgate, EC2; 11 Heath Street, NW3; 123 Fulham Road, SW3; 94 High Street, SW19.