34 Years at a Dry Cleaner Taught Me Whose Family Stopped Hugging Them. It's in the Collars.

A dry cleaner who has checked every collar by hand since 1992 explains the musty smell nobody will mention, why it keeps coming back, and what she tells her customers now. In her own words, as told to our writer.

By Nina Castellano · Updated October 30, 2026 · 7 min read

Has someone you love started hugging you from the side? Or standing one step farther back than they used to? Read this closely. It could save you a lot of quiet Sundays.

I've run a dry cleaner for 34 years. Every piece that comes in, I check by hand. I turn up the collar, I look at the cuffs, and I smell it. The smell tells me how to treat it.

In my job I hear the same two things almost every week. They usually sound like this:

"Can you get the smell out of this? I've washed it three times and it's still there."A customer at my counter

Or...

"My daughter says I need to get my sweaters cleaned more often. I can't smell a thing on them."Another customer, the same week

I know the smell they mean. It isn't sweat. Sweat is sharp and sour. This one is faint and musty, like a cedar chest that's been shut too long. It shows up on my older customers, and almost never on the young ones.

Of course I always tell them I'll do my best. And I do. The sweater comes out clean. Then two weeks later it comes back in with the same smell.

And honestly, I understand why nobody fixes this on their own. They can't smell it. The people who can smell it would rather crack a window than say it out loud. Nobody here is to blame.

What I see across my counter every week

I can clean a sweater. I can't clean what happens to a family. Very few of these stories end well on their own.

One of my regulars, a widow I'll call Judy, set her navy cardigan on my counter last March and asked me to "really get the smell out." The night before, at her granddaughter's recital, the girl had sat three rows back. In the car she told Judy her sweater smelled "like the basement at church." I cleaned it perfectly. I said nothing. I knew it would come back.

I didn't believe my friend

A month later I found that same smell on the collar of my own blouse. I'm 61. I shower every morning. I'd worn it all day and noticed nothing.

My friend Nadine runs the bakery next door. When I told her, she said, "Oh, honey. Persimmon." She'd read about a soap made with it.

I was more than a little doubtful. I've seen every miracle spray and laundry booster come across my counter. But I tried it anyway, mostly to make Nadine happy.

And I was shocked. It worked. Let me explain why, because once you hear it, it makes perfect sense.

Why the smell keeps coming back

As we get older, usually after 40, the skin starts making something called 2-nonenal. You say it "two-NO-nuh-nal." It's a natural oil with a faint, musty smell. It collects on collars, pillowcases and scarves. It isn't poor hygiene. It's biology. It happens to clean people.

Here is the part a dry cleaner understands better than anyone. Water doesn't move oil. That's the whole reason my business exists. Lipstick, salad dressing, the oil from the back of a neck: wash it in water and it stays put.

Regular soap is built for water-based sweat and everyday dirt. So it runs right over that oil. Deodorant and perfume don't fix it either. They only cover it up.

And your own nose gets used to it. It's with you every day, so your brain stops noticing. That's why Judy couldn't smell it. It's why I couldn't smell it on myself, after a lifetime of smelling it on everybody else.

What it is, and how to use it

It's called True Tannin. The company is named after persimmon tannin, and the whole bar is built around it. The tannin sticks to that musty oil and lifts it off the skin, instead of covering it up. People in Japan have used persimmon for this for a long time.

It's softened with coconut oil, green tea and hyaluronic acid, so it doesn't dry out older skin. No sulfates, no parabens, no heavy synthetic fragrance.

Nadine told me the two things that matter most: where you wash, and how long. The oil collects in five spots:

1. The back of the neck
2. Behind the ears
3. The chest
4. The upper back
5. The hairline

Lather those five spots and leave the lather on for about half a minute. Then rinse. Give it 30 days for the full effect. One bar lasts about four weeks.

Regular soap vs. persimmon tannin

	Regular soap, deodorant, perfume	Persimmon tannin soap
Built for	Water-based sweat and dirt, or covering smells	The musty oil itself
What happens to the oil	It stays on the skin, or gets covered for a while	The tannin sticks to it and lifts it off
Where you use it	All over, or under the arms	The five spots where the oil collects
How long	A quick rinse	Half a minute of lather, then rinse

What happened next

By the end of my second week, my own collars were coming in plain. Just cotton and starch. After a month they smelled like nothing at all, which in my business is the best smell there is.

Then I told Judy. I waited until the shop was empty and told her everything I just told you. In June she showed me a picture from the summer recital. Her granddaughter was in the seat right next to her, leaning on her arm. Her friends at bridge club pulled their chairs back in close, too. And she said it didn't dry out her skin one bit.

Bottom line: if someone you love keeps standing a little farther back, it's worth 30 days

(No need to worry about my shop. People will always spill gravy on their good pants. My business will be fine.)

If there's something that keeps a grandmother out of the back row, it gets my word. I'd much rather live in a world where the collars come in clean and the grandkids sit up front.

They stand behind it, too. This is their promise, word for word: "Use it for a full 60 days. If you do not smell fresher, email us and we send back 100% of your money. The bar is yours to keep either way."

So here is all it takes:

1. Get a bar of True Tannin from the link below.
2. Lather the five spots and leave it on for half a minute.
3. Rinse, and give it 30 days.