Tuesday, April 5, 2011

A 100% cotton non-iron dress shirt - really!

Mr O has just discovered Seidensticker 100% cotton non-iron shirt. Which really is non-iron. No, I mean really. Once again I find myself exclaiming, O brave new world! (I expect we'll crack poverty and world peace any day now….)

We recently bought some other shirts that claim to be non-iron, with varying degrees of success. The Seidensticker are the real deal.

I do not use any tricks or special equipment. The O household has a front-load washer, and I do use the crease free setting. When I hung the shirt out on the line in a light breeze I got the best result. Drip-dry inside was not exactly creased, but did not have the same crispness. Moving air seemed to help. The shirt dried inside did need a quick 'touch up' with the iron. What my mother used to call 'a lick and a promise'. This was made almost worth doing because I sprayed on some lavendar water for the totally over-the-top care. (Yes, sometimes I am that much of a domestic tragic - but not often.)

The next best non-iron shirt was Brooksfield (by Gloweave). It was not crumpled either, but you could tell it had not been ironed. The Seidensticker shirt did look ironed. No creases, at all. Other shirts in various brands all needed to be ironed.

Both the Brooksfield and Seidenticker shirts iron like a dream, if one feels very dedicated or if the gentleman has a very important meeting or a wedding or funeral to attend. I do prefer the German shirt though - it handled better and the seams were so even the shirt laid flat ready for the iron. Both had a soft smooth texture, which I think of as 'buttery' even though no grease is involved.

Serious attention to detail, and a seriously wonderful sensory experience. If you have to wear a business shirt. Or launder one.

5 comments:

Doushkasmum said...

So do they coat the cotton with something to make it non-iron? That is not a natural property of even the best cotton, so how do they do it?

opinionatedchildlesswoman said...

I haven't found out how Seidensticker do it, but generally non-iron cotton is treated with formaldehyde. Which does sound a bit yuck, but the shirts themselves don't smell and don't feel funky. Seidensticker call their process "comfort 24" so it may be a new process - it wicks sweat away as well, which is a bonus, and not a notable property of formaldehyde. My scrounge through various online forums notes that others find line drying to work best, and also that a light pressing every 3-5 washes keeps the non-iron effect working. Eventually the treatment wears off, but in the better quality shirts users say the cuffs and collars wear out before the non-iron wears off. (Cheap non-iron shirts usually on guarantee non-iron for 30 washes.)

Anonymous said...

I have 2 new Seidensticker short-sleeve casual shirts, both sold as non-iron and just washed for the first time. We are familiar with these 100% cotton non-iron shirts because I have an plain-coloured Olymp one which is pretty good.

One Seidensticker looks fine without ironing, but the other really needs it. We haven't ironed it this time to see if it looks better when worn, but I have a feeling that we'll be ironing it in the future. It's a check pattern, but if it was a plain colour I'm sure we'd be ironing it now.

Very nice shirts, both, but we're not convinced by the non-iron claims. Be warned!

Richard C. Lambert said...

My sister-in-law Anna recently bought some cloth diapers like ours for their third sweet little girl that will make her debut soon. I've talked about using our cloth diapers several times before, but one thing I never bothered to post about was our little fleece insert thingys, which is lame of me because they are probably one of the most useful things to have if you're using cloth diapers like ours. Big and tall dress shirts

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