A collection of clean, stylish dress shirts is always a must-have for any gentleman's wardrobe, and there are several ways to properly maintain that desired crisp, clean appearance.
The most basic form of maintenance involves hanging up your suits and dress shirts properly after each use, as routinely doing this will help minimize wrinkles and keep your formal wear more protected from the elements such as dust and accidental spills. As tempting as it may be after some of those more stressful workdays to merely toss your formal wear onto an empty chair, hanging everything up in its proper place will prolong the lifespan of your trousers, jackets, and shirts.
Just as it is necessary for any other articles of clothing, routine cleaning must also be done. While it's not usually recommended to launder your suits at home, you can sometimes get away with this for your dress shirts, depending on the material and how often you feel like breaking out that ironing board. By and large, however, most gentlemen prefer to use a dry cleaning service due to convenience, consistency, quality assurance, and other perks that might be thrown in with the service. To go a little further in keeping your dress shirts in pristine condition, starching is a great way to do this, and this optional extra is pretty much universally adopted by dry cleaners across the globe.
--Starching: A More Thorough Examination--
Whether we love it or hate it, we all have a general understanding of what starch is and what it does. While some might say that starch keeps dress shirts bright and wrinkle-free, others find the substance to be too constricting and uncomfortable on the skin. Depending on personal experience, too much starch can turn some gentlemen away from using it altogether, while too little won't bring about the desired effects it's supposed to have. Just like anything, it's all about finding that proper balance tailored to your personal preferences, but before we get into the pros and cons of starching your dress shirts, it's good to have a more comprehensive understanding of what starch really is and how it works.
Unlike many other household cleaners, laundry products, and chemicals, starch is aptly named for what it actually is. Starch, as its name implies, is normally made from rice, corn, potato, or wheat, the very same starches that are integral to the human diet. Today, for its applications in clothing, it is normally sold in spray bottles or aerosol cans so the user can better control the amount that is applied to any given garment. In decades past, however, the starching process wasn't quite as precise, which is perhaps why even to this day many people prefer to shy away from it. Instead of being sold in spray bottles or cans, the starch was mixed with water in vats so clothes could be easily dipped into the mixture. While this older process was quick and effective, the starch was often too heavy, resulting in too much rigidity and discomfort. This method has been all but abandoned, since most dry cleaners today will give you the option of light, medium, or heavy starching that is possible with the current, more adjustable methods of application.
While we most often associate starch with its abilities to provide dress shirts with a stiffer, cleaner look, it has a hidden, more practical use as well. It is unclear exactly when the process of starching was invented, but we do know that it became more common around the 16th century, when its practitioners understood that a layer of starch could be very good at creating a sort of invisible buffer between one's clothes and the elements. Rather than soiling the fabric directly, dirt, dust, liquid, and other debris would stick only to the starch, thereby making the laundering process easier and extending a garment's longevity. Just as cooking starch acts as an effective binding agent, the same can be said for laundry starch, as it not only provides a more rigid structure but also a shielding layer that is able to trap debris before it becomes embedded directly into your clothes.
In spite of these positive attributes, the use of heavy starching has gradually waned in popularity over the last two decades as more gentlemen emphasize comfort over aesthetic considerations. Even so, it's still possible to strike a balance between the benefits of starching and its potential drawbacks, simply by using less of it. Opting for a light or medium layer of starch will boost your dress shirt's structural rigidity and provide adequate protection from the elements without feeling too stiff or constricting. To go a step further, rather than starching your entire shirt, you might want to starch only the parts of it that normally require that extra stiffness, such as collars, cuffs, and front plackets if comfort is one of your main concerns.
--Cons--
Since we've lightly touched on some of the benefits of starching, we should also explain some of the drawbacks before we delve into additional positives that starching can provide.
When it comes to starching, the fabric of your dress shirt matters above all else. Starch will work best on natural materials such as 100 percent cotton, certain cotton blends, and linen. The composition of these fabrics allows starch to bind very easily to the fibers, thereby providing rigidity and protection. There are some materials, however, that starch doesn't bind to very well at all. Polyester, polyester blends, and other synthetic materials should be avoided, as the starch really has nowhere to go except down to the ground. Since starch won't hold or bind to these materials, using starch on them can give your synthetic shirts a flaky, unkempt appearance, which is the exact opposite of what starch was designed to do in the first place. It's also best to avoid using starch on anything made of wool, as wool is very good at drawing away moisture from anything that is applied to it, leaving you with a similar problem (albeit through a different mechanism) that you would encounter by starching synthetic fabrics.
There's a good reason why starch is most often associated with your standard white dress shirts, as these are the types of garments on which starch works best. This is because laundry starch happens to have the same color composition as those bright white dress shirts ubiquitous in formal wear. Unfortunately, this limits the practical uses of laundry starch as applied to darker colors. When starch is used on black, navy blue, or dark burgundy dress shirts, the result is that these dress shirts will appear to have a thin layer of film on them, which obviously detracts from any aesthetic benefits that starch would otherwise have on lighter colors. On the upside, darker colors tend to better hide unwanted creases or imperfections in the fabric, so the need to use starch on your darker dress shirts is less of a concern to begin with anyway.
When properly applied, the presence of starch shouldn't be obvious to any onlookers. Sometimes, however, dry cleaners and gentlemen who prefer to do their starching at home can get a little carried away with how much they use. Applying too much starch to a dress shirt will on occasion cause it to project too much of a reflective shine, taking the desired glossiness of a starched shirt to undesirable extremes. In order to mitigate this unwanted effect, you're better off starting with a small amount of starch and slowly adding more until you're satisfied with how it looks and how it feels, as it is much easier to add more starch than it is to take away too much once it's applied.
One of the biggest drawbacks to starching your dress shirts is the perceived discomfort and itchiness it can cause. While starch itself is harmless, it is sometimes associated with being a chemical irritant, since it is most often applied in the context of a dry cleaning service, which does use chemicals and solvents to launder clothes. Because starch is made from natural materials, it's almost never the starch itself that causes the irritation. Rather, it's the structural rigidity it provides that can make a person uncomfortable. The stiffer frame of a starched dress shirt can make your movements feel less fluid than normal and cause unwanted friction between your skin and clothes, thereby causing mild irritation. To prevent this, simply use less starch, or consider wearing an undershirt when a heavier application of starch is warranted.
--Pros--
So long as you use starch on your dress shirts when it is appropriate and don't go overboard with the amount, the benefits will normally outweigh the drawbacks.
Starched shirts are less prone to wrinkling throughout the day thanks to the added structural integrity that a layer of starch can provide. As a result, your shirts will stay looking crisper, cleaner, and brighter for much longer than a shirt that's been laundered only.
This added layer also acts as a barrier between your clothes and the outside elements. Say you're driving to work, and you accidentally spill some coffee onto your pristine white dress shirt. Without starch, that coffee stain is likely going to stay there all day. If you spill that same amount of coffee onto a starched shirt, it's much easier to rub off so long as you take care of it rather quickly before it has a chance to seep into the underlying fabric.
If you're the type of gentleman who prefers to iron your shirts at home, the added benefit of starching your dress shirts is that this process becomes much easier and less time consuming. Given the added structural rigidity starch provides, you won't have as many unwanted creases to iron over at the end of the day compared to a shirt that hasn't been starched at all.
As it goes with most things related to fashion, whether or not to starch your shirts—and to what degree—is going to be a matter of personal preference. If you're still unsure about what is best for your own collection of Enzo Custom formal wear, there's no harm in taking part in a little bit of trial and error the next time you drop off your shirts at the cleaners or launder them at home.