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Best Curtain Expert

  • Soraya Hernandez

    718-460-3159

    New York is tough on draperies. Dirty air seems to get around the edges of every window, quickly turning chic décor into gray dust rags. F.I.T. alumna Soraya Hernandez is a specialist in “interior couture.” Working in her Queens basement studio (at $45 per hour), she hand-stitches window treatments from scratch and handles tricky repairs like moth damage. But her special mastery is delicate cleaning—discoloration from fading, flood damage, or just grime. When it comes to the latter, she believes the fewer chemicals employed, the better, and starts each touch-up with a gentle vacuuming to test the textile’s strength and level of grime. Buyer’s tip: She says she’s found linen to be the most forgiving material, and when asked about her biggest challenge, she does not hesitate: “taffeta.”

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From the 2009 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine

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Our mission this year: to hunt down not just the best but the best values in the eating, shopping, drinking, and general-consuming universe of New York. It’s quite the process, this, requiring eating and shopping and drinking (all in the name of research), followed by heated but civil discussion, and heated but less-civil discussion, until a winner emerges in each category.

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