Should I be suspect of "non-iron", "crease-free", "wrinkle-free" shirts?

[FopTalk]

I don't like ironing my shirts, but I can't stand creases either. I imagine I'm not alone in this.

Hence, clothiers make non-iron, crease-free or wrinkle-free shirts.

I have a basic, white non-iron Brooks Brothers dress shirt and, I gotta say, it's quite the convenience. It comes out of the dryer, I hang it and, moments later, it looks as good as new. The shirt seems perfectly adequate in all other respects.

I'm aware that there's a lot of fuss about non-iron shirts being awful, for many reasons. See this old Slate article calling them "the satanic love-child of chemistry and retailing, combining all the worst qualities of plywood, vinyl, and embalming fluid in a garment that would be more at home in the Spanish Inquisition than the cubicles of the modern workplace."

I'd like to poll the SF community:

(1) Could people please weigh about how they feel about non-iron shirts?

(2) Besides suing a clothes steamer (which I find about 70% effective), does anybody have any advice about how to avoid ironing non-non-iron shirts and still have them look crisp?

 

[12345Michael54321]



(1) Could people please weigh about how they feel about non-iron shirts?

They have their advantages, and their disadvantages. Thus, depending upon one's specific needs/desires, they can be either an excellent choice, or a questionable choice.

I find them to be far less awful than some seem to maintain they are. I don't find that they reek of chemical smells, or are painfully scratchy, or that they fail to "breathe" for me. But that having been said, if I have the choice of a non-iron shirt, and an otherwise similar shirt which is not non-iron, I'll often choose the later. Not always, but often.

But then, I don't mind spending a minute or two with an iron. To each his own.

(2) Besides suing a clothes steamer (which I find about 70% effective), does anybody have any advice about how to avoid ironing non-non-iron shirts and still have them look crisp?

Have someone else do the work for you. While most dry cleaners aren't very good, it's usually quite possible to find a better-than-average one, capable of returning clean, wrinkle-free shirts to you, at reasonable expense.

 

[Murlsquirl]

Quote:
I know they make some that feel and look good, but I've never felt the need. People that think they can pull a non-wrinkle shirt out of the wash and put it on are sadly mistaken...it still needs to be ironed or it looks terrible. It may resist wrinkles a little better throughout the day, but every shirt is going to wrinkle...it doesn't bother me but to each is own.

Like Michael said, just take them to the cleaners. Don't dry clean them, just have them laundered and pressed. Using a steamer will doing nothing to make the shirts crisp. They need to be pressed.