a wrinkle in your plans: the truth about non-iron shirts.
We know that the Modern American Man is now working harder and earning less. So perhaps it makes sense that when it comes to his wardrobe he should allow himself to do a lot less while spending a little more.
Right?
Wrong.
I’m referring, of course, to non-iron dress shirts. In case you’re unfamiliar, these are dress shirts that can be laundered right at home and come out of the dryer wrinkle-free and ready to wear to work. Goodbye wrinkles! Goodbye trips to the dry cleaner! And hello to convenience, ease, and the phenomenal feeling of pulling a dress shirt out of the wash, hanging it, and having it dry… sans wrinkles!
It’s like magic.
And by “magic”, of course, I mean that before being sold to you and rubbed all over your body and sweated into your pores, the shirts are dipped in a formaldehyde solution—yes, the same formaldehyde normally associated with cadavers and high school biology class fetal dissections.
(Now let me just pause for a moment here to say: The purpose of this column is to dissuade readers from the false promise that is non-iron dress shirts. I have a few arguments to make, but if the prospect of a bathing your Brooks Brothers button-down in carcinogenic chemicals isn’t already enough to make you stop dead in your tracks, then there’s probably nothing else in the world I can do to convince you otherwise. So you may as well stop reading now and just go tell your friends about some asshole fashion blogger who was using “scare” tactics. That’s fine [but if you do, please still “like” us on facebook!].)
So yes, there are some freaky chemicals in your non-iron getup. Is it true that we more or less spend our lives surrounded by low levels of toxins that may-or-may-not be killing us? Of course. But people also once thought that cigarettes and cocaine were peachy keen. Who knows what we’ll know by the time we finally know it. For now, at least, nothing’s healthier than a little skepticism.
(The first time I was exposed to the wrinkle-free phenomenon was probably a decade ago in a commercial for Dockers slacks that were wrinkle-free and also, if I can recall correctly, stain resistant [!]. It was a surreal commercial in which things like red wine were being spilled all over khakis at an alarming rate and simply being brushed off with no discernable residue. The mind simply reels at whatever was in those pants to make them resistant to so many of the terrors of everyday life; suffice to say I’m fine with my slacks, too, having slightly less technology built into them than was used on the suits for the Apollo Missions.)
But if you’re one of those people who doesn’t give a shit about chemicals (and I know there are lots of you because I see you every week in the pharmacy buying crazy shit like “antiperspirants” [which are considered a bodily-function-altering drug by the FDA—just sayin’]) I have a few other deathblows to the non-iron fetish.
Comfort: Whether a summer swelter or a winter freeze, the wrinkle-free fabric will also be comfort-free. Because of the chemical bond formed in the fabric, the shirts breath less and are rougher on the skin. Let me put it this way: last summer I was wearing one of these puppies to a job interview during the D.C. heat wave and when I got back to my apartment, sweating and delirious, my soaked (but unwrinkled!) shirt was so thoroughly stuck to my body that I thought I was going to wilt away a la that girl in the movie Goldfinger who gets painted to death.
Fit: Also because of the chemicals, there is really no such thing as “breaking in” these bad boys. If, like me, you’re a guy who buys shirts with a 16-1/2” neck (which is actually a monster of a neck for a guy of my build, but that’s another story and this sizing part is all relative) but who can also wear a 16” and whose actual size is probably more like a 16-1/4”, then with non-iron shirts you will never have the luxury of buying that 16-1/2” and having it shrink ever so slightly down to your actual size. No sir: that non-wrinkling collar will be Dracula-stiff at its factory setting until the day you give it to Goodwill in disgust.
My suggestions: Find the time in your life to iron. If you can’t, then you’re too busy. If you’re too busy to set aside that time each week to do the mundane but semi-Zen task of ironing then you have more problems than lethally uncomfortable shirts (e.g. time management).
Senna ($85)/Trafalgar ($115)/ The Shoomaker ($85). Perfect non-iron shirts all from Hugh & Crye.
My final advice for when you’re in a pinch with a wrinkly dress shirt: vests and sweaters. They’re in. Trust me. I know everyone wants to make fun of Rick Santorum for wearing a vest, but his problem is not the vest, it’s the douche bag inside of it. And get a soft sweater; they’re nice to touch.
xoxo,
Grigs
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J. Grigsby Crawford grew up in the Great American West and lives in Washington, D.C. He has two non-iron shirts in his closet, which he stares at with fear and loathing and only keeps around for “emergencies.” His writing has appeared in Congressional Quarterly, The Colorado Daily, and Mile High Sports Magazine; he’s also written a book about his life for two years in the Ecuadorian Amazon and is currently looking for a literary agent. This is his second guest post for TheYouFinder.
