You’ve just received your order, and everything fits like a dream. You get dressed, but later that day, you realize there are no care instructions on your custom clothes. Here’s how to go about caring for your new shirts.
Hang It Up
As with a suit, hanging up your shirt after wear is an important part of garment care. Placing your shirt with the shoulder seams on their hanger after taking it off will keep the shirt looking tidy and relatively unwrinkled.
Laundering
We don’t recommend washing your custom-tailored shirts after every wear. If you wear an undershirt, especially one with sleeves, you can get 2 to 3 wears from a shirt before laundering it.
When it’s time to wash them, we recommend taking your shirts to your local dry cleaner to launder.
If you prefer to wash your shirts at home, you can wash your shirt on Permanent Press or Normal. Iron on a “cotton” setting with steam.
Our shirts do not require dry cleaning, nor do we recommend it.
Starch
If you send your shirts out for washing and pressing, tell them not to use starch.
Starching your shirt will set any wrinkles from wearing it into the fabric, reducing the number of wears you can get between washings.
Starch will also coat the cotton, blocking the flow of air through the fabric. Starching takes away the breathability of cotton and leaves you to overheat.
When to Replace Shirts
Fraying at the cuffs or collar and staining at the collar or armpits are signs of age in a shirt. Obviously, set-in stains from food or coffee that cannot wash out will ruin your shirt.
If the buttons are gaping from weight gain, it’s time to get new shirts.
If instead, you find the shirt billowing when you tuck it in, we can alter your shirts to fit more narrowly. Extra fabric or a very loose fit will be less comfortable than a shirt that matches your current measurements.
Review our article on how a shirt should fit if you aren’t quite sure about the way you’re wearing yours.
Caring for your new shirts properly will help them last longer. For more information, review our article on caring for your suit.