According to Stu Bloom at RAVE FabriCare, about 80% of men get their shirts back from the laundry on hangers, and this is certainly the wisest course since they are free of the creases that come from having them folded. The challenge with the practice comes when it is time to pack for a trip, and the shirts must be folded anyway.
The usual way to prepare shirts for packing is to fold them in thirds, replicating the commercial laundry folding machine (see the shirt on the right in the photo). Whoever designed that machine was apparently not very clothes conscious as that fold leaves the vertical and horizontal creases it imparts placed so that they can be visible under a jacket, which might not be a terrible thing with some cloth as it will hang out in an hour or two but heavier shirtings like oxfords and twills can remain creased for much of the day, contributing to a messier look than a man ought to aspire to (here we deliberately ignore no-iron shirts on the grounds that the well dressed man eschews them).
Now, it is only natural that a man would assume that folding meant visible creases and that there is nothing to be done about it, at least until like me he noticed that RAVE's clean by mail shirts are folded so that any creases that might occur in parts of the shirt front are not visible when a man has his jacket on (the shirt on the left was folded by RAVE). The secret is to fold the shirt in half rather than in thirds. In other words, when the shirt is on its front laid out for folding, turn the sleeve sides over only a quarter of the way, leaving a space between them. Then fold the bottom up so the shirt is roughly halved into a square. Leaving all the folds loose will also help the shirt's appearance, but only marginally as the state of being packed will inevitably press it to a certain extent.
I will be the first to admit that the square shirt fold is fairly obscure advice, and has the downside that otherwise useful suitcase accessories like Eagle Creek's folders and cubes seem to all be designed to accommodate shirts folded into thirds. Nonetheless, a supply of heavy duty polyethylene bags makes for a reasonable substitute and having a supply of pressed looking shirts when one unpacks is worth a little one-time trouble.
12 comments:
Will, I appreciate your advice, but I think that you really should check out the very latest generation of no-iron RTW shirts from Brooks Brothers (best of class). They are NOT the hard/heavy shirts of years gone by. Rather, they are soft and light. I still have mine commercially laundered and folded, but the whole "wrinkled out of the box" thing simply doesn't happen for me. -- Fred H.
It's a religious issue. I do not believe in RTW shirts.
...Or take a few minutes and save money by learning how to fold a shirt! (Not that hard at all!)
I always try to fold my shirts so as to minimize wrinkles, but no matter how well I pull it off the shirts still look like they've been in my bag.
The fail-safe for me is the hotel iron. Two minutes, and I'm done. Using a hotel iron is a small window into the quality of the establishment: it's something that 99 out of a 100 people never use, so hotel can go cheap and stock low-range irons. But for the 1 out of 100 who use the thing, a nice iron (and board!) is much appreciated.
I have a few non-iron shirts. They started out fine, but now they really aren't non-iron at all. They are very, very easy to iron compared to regular poplin though.
Then we will agree to disagree. I believe that ironing is something that happens to other people.
I'd go with Austin - the hotel iron or the hotel valet/butler doing it. Of course Will is right - RTW is only for emergencies.
I also use hotel irons and I have a small travel iron for when there's none available - a sprinkle of water added and I'm done. It's really the only true guarantee of a completely pressed shirt on the road.
I use a wooden cutting board to fold my shirts. Works pretty well. Then into bags as Will suggests.
Hmm, if I'm picturing this correctly Rave's folding method is the same as I learned from my grandmother. But she and her mother took in laundry so I suppose they could be considered folding professionals.
It's not really a religious issue for me, it's more the case that not everyone who wants to dress well can afford a "money no object" approach to it.
I always have my shirts folded by the laundry both out of habit from the days when I travelled a lot but also because there's something aesthetically satisfying about removing the shirt from it's wrapper and tearing up the cardbord. The criticism that this leaves a crease undetectable to anyone not standing two inches away with from my chest with a magnifying glass seems a small price to pay. I also hate the sight of masses of shirts covered in plastic and on wire hangers hanging in my closet.
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