Caring for Linen Shirts

[carl browne]

Is it OK to send linen dress shirts through the commercial laundry as you would cotton ones? How does linen react to hot water, drying, starch, etc.?

Shirts aren't going to get washed and ironed at home, and dry-cleaning is a horror.

Thanks,

C

[Jordan Marc]

Carl:

No bespoke shirt should be sent to a commercial laundry. It doesn't matter if it's made of linen, cotton or silk, don't do it. While there are some shirtmakers who offer a laundering service for their customers (at a price), you're better off searching for a seamstress who will wash your shirts by hand and iron them properly. Although you may not like the idea of doing the job yourself, you should at least know what's involved so you can be conversant with your seamstress. Search for Laliquette's article on the lounge entitled HOW TO IRON A SHIRT. It's a fount of information, replete with pictures.

JMB

[carl browne]

In a better world this would be true. I suppose that by sending my shirts to a commercial laundry (and I've got the most reputable one available) I'm cutting the life of my shirts in half. But the fact is that neither I nor my wife is willing and the help isn't trained for it. My shirts are often pretty distinctive, so I tend to tire of them before they wear out, and I try to keep enough shirts on hand so the rotation is pretty slow. I think that's about the best one can hope for around here.

Suit pressing and cleaning is a far worse problem. I absolutely refuse to send my suits out to a dry cleaner and am desperate to find a local outfit that can sponge and press. Sending them back to London from California seems a little drastic, but may be necessary.

But my question remains: can linen shirts be washed, dried, and ironed in the same manner that cotton ones can?

C

[Merc]

But my question remains: can linen shirts be washed, dried, and ironed in the same manner that cotton ones can?

C

yes and no

you can wash them in cold water, particularly with a front loader.
if you dry them they'll shrink.
ironing is no problem.

but if you are going to take linen out, you probably ought to have it dry cleaned.
the temperatures commercial launders use will get them-

[shredder]

Contrary to common belief, linen should be washed at a cooler temperature than for cotton. It should be at around 30°C/86°F, max 40°C/104°F. Washing linen at higher temperature exposes them to risks of little knobs forming in the weave. (Don't ask me about the physics of this.) I only learned this recently...

[S. Gillette]

My shirtmaker(esse) insists that linen is far less likely to cause any problems in handling and care than any other material. By linen, of course, she refers to what she calls "proper linen", which is handwoven or woven on slow commerical looms and of the best overall quality (in lack of full insight and better words). If you manage to still find something like this (which is, sadly, becoming increasingly difficult), there is almost nothing you can do to destroy it, except maybe to burn it. Proper linen should take a washing at 60, even 90°C easy and keep its shape bettern than cotton. I have a few shirts she made for me in vintage handwoven bavarian "Bauernleinen" from her own collection (yes: collection in the litteral sense of the word) which are some of the best shirts I own. They are truly indestructible.

However, I don't have much to share about how well most modern linen offerings hold up in comparison to the above but I figure that if your regular cotton shirts tolerate whatever you are doing to them now, linen should not make much of a difference except for the better.

[Simon A]

Even cheap linen will handle quite tough treatment, as long as you don't overheat it. When living in Indonesia, my linen shirts were washed the Indonesian way ( by hand in cold water with soap and then banged over a rock many times) and they lasted over five years of day-in, day-out wear. They were so beautifully soft after five years of weekly "beatings" I was loathe to replace them. I have found machine washing in cold water or slightly warm water, with a detergent designed for cold water, works well if hand-washing is not viable. Then line-drying until only faintly damp, then ironing with a hot dry iron gives a crisp finish.

[alden]

Most commercial linen is sanforized and can be washed at normal temperatures. But avoid using a drying machine as the heat will cause shrinking. Hang dry your shirts as you might (or should) do your cotton shirts.

Michael

[SteveC]

My very first post here so I thought it may be appropriate to be useful.

My own experience with linen shirts is that they will take far more abuse than cotton. Indeed, I have tried without success to shrink some slightly too large ready to wear items.

I usually just hot wash and tumble dry. Unthinkable with my considerably better fitting cottons.

Steve

[Costi]

How does linen react to hot water, drying, starch, etc.?

Starch? Do you have your shirts starched? I thought my shirtmaker was the last woman on Earth to starch her bed linens and her husband's shirts, by hand, the old-fashioned way...

I guess your best chance is to wash your shirts (cotton and linen) at home, let them dry on a line and train the domestic help to iron them - it's not that hard.
If your collars and cuffs don't get soiled much, you can wash your shirts with soap nuts (google them) instead of detergent - they will be softer (no softener needed), easier to iron, no irritation from residual chemicals. The colours will last longer, too. And they will have a wonderful smell of just "clean" instead of the aggressive chemical perfume of any detergent.