Remedy for collar-stay imprint left over from ironing??

The dry cleaner I tried out, after I repeatedly told them to be careful about the unremovable collar stays in my Jermyn Street shirt, STILL MANAGED TO iron the hell out of it and left huge imprints on my collar. Their one purpose in life is to clean clothes and listen to the customer, but they can't even perform that most infantile task. I'd like to ask if anyone knows if there are any remedies for this problem...

I found one suggestion on this forum from 2005, does this work?:

Originally Posted by Alexander Kabbaz

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Not a joke:

Squeeze a lemon into a shallow dish. Let evaporate. Rub the remaining salts-of-lemon on the shiny spot with your fingertip. Leave overnight. Wash normally. Usually works.

FYI - works for scorches too. And you can hurry the evaporation by plading in the Sun or in a low oven.

Courtesy of Kabbaz's Believe-It-Or-Not.

Anyone whoo has the answer to this deserves teh nobel prize.

Svenn, are you in London by any chance? I have had horrible experiences with dry cleaners here. They are uniformly bad, and will just nod their head "yeah mate, yeah mate sure" when you give instructions, only to just throw whatever it was you were talking about into the pile with the rest. And I can't count the times my clothes have come back with new stains, after which I was blamed for them. It's shocking. US dry cleaners are no treat, but this.... Rant off.

That said, I've recently been shelling out vast amounts of money for Jeeves. Even if they don't listen to the customer (which they don't), someone back there actually knows clothes and will usually do the right thing without being asked.

Can't help on the original question. I'd **** the collar stay "pockets" with a razor and remove the stays in the future.

Originally Posted by Svenn

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Their one purpose in life is to clean clothes and listen to the customer, but they can't even perform that most infantile task.

Thats two purposes/tasks... so, yes, it might be asking too much.

Having the shirt dry cleaned rather than laundered sometimes helps. The problem tends to be at its worst on fabrics that have some texture to them, the kind of texture that can be knocked down by heavy ironing. I did the dry cleaning thing recently to a charcoal grey twill shirt and it made the imprint about half as noticeable as it had previously been. Haven't tried the lemon trick.

Also, this isn't just limited to situations where the stays are in the shirt. Some cleaners iron so hard that even the sleeve for the stay leaves an imprint.

It may be an extreme measure, but can you have someone unstitch the entire collar, iron it flat, and then resew it?

the best way to get rid of that imprint is to get rid of the shirt.

That way, you don't ever have to worry about imprints, stains or loose buttons

Originally Posted by Svenn

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I found one suggestion on this forum from 2005, does this work?:
You are asking if something that Alex Kabbaz wrote regarding shirt care is accurate?

Originally Posted by FIHTies

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You are asking if something that Alex Kabbaz wrote regarding shirt care is accurate?

Is that guy known for bad info? I'm evaporating lemon juice as we speak, I'm a little hesitant to rub the salts of some yellowy acid on my white shirt, but it's messed up anyway I guess. I'm partially pissed off at the maker of the shirt for having irremovable stays in there.

Originally Posted by mdg137

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Thats two purposes/tasks... so, yes, it might be asking too much.

Originally Posted by Svenn

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Is that guy known for bad info?
That guy known his beans. You are safe. (and it cant hurt anyway, right?)

I hate dealing with dry cleaners.

My solution is simple, it involves a washing machine and a steam iron, I never have issues with dry cleaners and dont have to pay for their service (or lack there of). The best cleaners in my area charges something like $4/shirt, so that's $120/mo in cleaning shirts....no thanks.

Not something I've tried, but what if you took a clean suede brush and gently roughed up the shiny area? Like you said, it's f-cked, anyway. Please let us know how what you do works.

Alright, I couldn't get any "salt of lemon" like Kabbaz wrote, but I tried another instruction off the internet and it looks better now, to the point I'd wear it:

soaked the imprint with hydrogen peroxide for 1 hour, half of that time with a light coating of ammonia as well. applied with a q-tip. rinse with water, applying lemon juice concurrently. Put in the washer with cold water and bleach. It's dry now and the imprints are maybe 50% less noticeable than they were before.

I'm not sure what the shirtmaker intended with non-removable collar stays... am I never supposed to iron it? It's a little wrinkled and rough now after the machine washing... but I don't dare but an iron on it...