Wrinkle-free fabrics - downsides for dress shirts?

[swiego]

I've had some "nice" Kiton, Borelli, etc. cotton shirts over the years; in recent months/years, for the sake of variety, I picked up various dress shirts with wrinkle-free fabrics. Some are Nordstrom shirts with their Smartcare wrinkle-free fabric. Others are Brooks Brothers. After extended wearing of these versus other shirts here's what I've noticed, to my great surprise,

"Nice" shirts - wrinkle easily, therefore require high-heat, high-pressure, error-prone ironing, or professional pressing that cracks buttons, or starch, or professional laundering, all of which have taken their toll on the sheen and drape of the fabric in a bad way. None of these shirts look terribly new nowadays.

"Wrinkle-free" shirts - delicate wash, delicate dry for 10 minutes, hang, done. These shirts are looking like new long after I bought them, compared to my much more expensive shirts. It's because the comparative work required to clean and prepare them is negligible vs. wrinkle-prone fabrics.

Granted in construction, a few of these shirts are pretty vanilla, but some of the "John W. Nordstrom" ones seem to give up nothing to my most expensive luxury shirts in construction and feel. So I'm starting to wonder, what are the downsides?

 

[Orsini]

Originally Posted by swiego

I've had some "nice" Kiton, Borelli, etc. cotton shirts over the years...
How would you say the non-iron shirts are compared to the must-iron shirts in warm weather?

 

[swiego]

A bit heavier. I guess that would be a downside. They are thicker fabrics and somewhat warm during the summer.

 

[Orsini]

Originally Posted by swiego

A bit heavier. I guess that would be a downside. They are thicker fabrics and somewhat warm during the summer.
I had heard that the stuff they put on the shirts to make then non-iron interfere with air circulation make them wear hotter than the must-iron. Actually, we had a big scrap on the other side about this recently. I trotted out my standard rant. I'm afraid it wasn't very popular...

 

[epa]

What are those "wrinkle-free" shirts made of?
100% cotton?
Cotton&polyester?

 

[Sator]

One of the reasons I avoid RTW shirts from Borrelli, Kiton et al is that they like to use high yarn count shirtings eg 2x160s. These are fragile, hard to press and wrinkle like crazy. After a few minutes of wear the arms look like accordions.

I always prefer to have shirts made in shirtings that are less than 2x130 - in the same way that I prefer non-super worsteds as suitings. Twills in particular are more crease resistant and easier to iron. I always hand wash my shirts. I also prefer English shirtings to Italian ones (including Tomasso Masoni aka Thomas Mason) used by the Italian RTW houses.

 

[Shirtmaven]

Construction of a wrinkle free shirt and high end italian brand is night and day.
wrinkle free shirts are made in completely automated factories. computrized equipment assures that they are all the same.
Carl

 

[grimslade]

Originally Posted by epa

What are those "wrinkle-free" shirts made of?
100% cotton?
Cotton&polyester?

We're talking about 100% cotton ones here.

 

[mdg137]

Ive found that it is far more difficult to get the non-iron shirts (at least the couple Brooks Brothers ones I own) to take a good pressing, especially sleeve creases--

 

[grimslade]

I make no effort to crease my sleeves.

 

[JayJay]

Originally Posted by grimslade

I make no effort to crease my sleeves.
Neither do I. My ironing board has a sleeve board attached to it that makes ironing the sleeves easy.

By the way, I don't mind a few wrinkles so I don't wear non-iron shirts.

 

[epa]

Originally Posted by grimslade

We're talking about 100% cotton ones here.

Good to hear.

 

[BBdude]

Originally Posted by Orsini

I had heard that the stuff they put on the shirts to make then non-iron interfere with air circulation make them wear hotter than the must-iron.

Now that you've brought this up ... I actually do notice quite a difference in my body temp when wearing these shirts. Could be a bonus come winter time!

Originally Posted by mdg137

Ive found that it is far more difficult to get the non-iron shirts (at least the couple Brooks Brothers ones I own) to take a good pressing, especially sleeve creases--

For the most part I only wear BB and I find that the sleeve creases are the same today as they were when I bought them.

However, similar to other posters my sleeve creases are not important. I do find that BB shirts (even slim-fits) have a bit of extra fabric and I'm a bigger build. Not important enough to me to get tailored shirts so these will have to do!

 

[swiego]

Are there any other non-iron shirt brands one should look at? I'm well aware of the Brooks Brothers and Nordstrom shirts, and after having had such good luck with them, I'd be interested in other brands made of similar types of fabric.

 

[Azure]

Sorry to say, but best cotton is the one who wrinkles and needs high temperature ironing.

Last week it took me 40 minutes to iron a " prime "minister white pique Pal Zileri dress shirt, a bad Boss shirt takes me 5 minutes to iron, but I guess they fake the tag, so a bit of polyester it must have, not 100 % cotton even when it says so.