Dry Cleaning

JR's correct -- your shirts won't last as long if you dryclean. Also, it costs more to have them drycleaned than laundered.

You can buy non-iron cotton dress shirts. I have a few for when I'm in a hurry. I don't like the way they look and feel, and I think they tend to show wear faster than regular cotton dress shirts, pitting at the cuffs, collar and that strip down the front where the buttons are.

I was about 30 when a colleague joked, "Do you have your shirts professionally wrinkled or do you wrinkle them yourself?" I laughed, but for the next five years I sent them to a laundry. Not for dry cleaning, but for wash and press. But then I began living with the woman who became my wife and she insisted we acquire a washer and dryer and I've been ironing shirts since. If you want a crisp look, spray on a little starch. But usually I wear shirts made of heavier oxford cloth, and if you're just wearing them with some khakis, it's OK to look a little rumpled. For some reason, the blue Brooks Brothers and Land's End oxford cloth tends to look suitable for this use right out of the dryer, but the white shirts need a little press (no starch), but really only on the front. The oxford cotton shirts with a buttondown collar (OCBDs) became popularized by preppy/Ivy types and having them slightly rumpled and dimpled (and somewhat frayed) is in keeping with their old letter-of-the-law minimum-acceptable compliance with their boarding school dress codes. The look is not supposed to appear well-tended. Tucked in and neat, yes, but not like your mom (or maid!) just did your wash.

The finer broadcloth is another matter. Should be unwrinkled all around. You'll get better at ironing with practice.

The only cotton I'd have dry-cleaned is a cotton poplin suit. I have three, and one of them, a Brooks Brothers, says on the label that you can machine wash, but I don't want to risk ruining the suit to find out.

As for ties, I have them drycleaned only when there's a spot.

 

Which brings up this line Gene Weingarten, then the editor of the Miami Herald's old "Tropic" magazine, wrote about then-Herald sports writer Peter Richmond:

"He sends his clothes to the rumplers."

 

"This shirt is dry clean only, which means it's dirty."
-Mitch Hedberg

 

I never really noticed this before, but then I've seldom needed to have ties drycleaned -- I'm careful with them. But I stumbled across this the other day, and I guess you're both right:

http://www.roberttalbott.com/rt_tieAtie_care.htm

Robert Talbott, BTW, has terrific ties, made in California. I have some that I bought in the 1980s and some newer ones, and they're among my faves.