Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why some clothes shrink in the wash and how to unshrink them

swinburne.edu.au

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 287 posts

Re: Why some clothes shrink in the wash and how to unshrink them

#161

Post by oslem »

jjice wrote: post #125
epolanski wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have recently started refusing to buy all of this plastic filled clothes. If I see any % of it I don't buy it. Period. I spend much more upfront for clothes, but I gain a lot long term. Clothes don't look terrible after few washings and they tend to last forever.

Why? Polyester (as one plastic based fiber) gets a lot of flack because low quality clothes tend to use it, but polyester can be a fantastic fabric if done right. Durable, fast drying, and can be completely recycled. For example, Patagonia tends to have high quality polyesters and has since the 70s. My experience with their fleece is that I can abuse it and it'll come out unaffected on the other end. Pilling now and…

Polyester is great for performance clothing where you need lots of moisture, but it retains stench really poorly compared to other materials.

When I travel, I love my merino + nylon shirts because I can wear them for days without washing and they fairly durable.

Re: Why some clothes shrink in the wash and how to unshrink them

#162

Post by remove-resolve »

jjice wrote: post #125
epolanski wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have recently started refusing to buy all of this plastic filled clothes. If I see any % of it I don't buy it. Period. I spend much more upfront for clothes, but I gain a lot long term. Clothes don't look terrible after few washings and they tend to last forever.

Why? Polyester (as one plastic based fiber) gets a lot of flack because low quality clothes tend to use it, but polyester can be a fantastic fabric if done right. Durable, fast drying, and can be completely recycled. For example, Patagonia tends to have high quality polyesters and has since the 70s. My experience with their fleece is that I can abuse it and it'll come out unaffected on the other end. Pilling now and…

I'd rather not be breathing in what it sheds.

Re: Why some clothes shrink in the wash and how to unshrink them

#163

Post by copperx »

cyberax wrote: post #134
soulofmischief wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem with polyester is the amount of microplastics which enter the water supply when washing them. It's an unacceptable amount.

Polyester is biodegradable, albeit slowly.

Everything is biodegradable, given enough time.

Re: Why some clothes shrink in the wash and how to unshrink them

#164

Post by steviedotboston »

crazygringo wrote: post #142
prmph wrote: post #68

Bought some dress shirts (made of mostly cotton) from Banana Republic, the same brand that had good shirts some years back, the exact same size I wear. Shockingly, after hand washing them for the first time in cold water, the sleeves have shrunk so dramatically that I cannot wear them any longer, except to roll up the sleeves Up to beyond the elbow. They just lost customer for life. Enshittification strikes again.

That doesn't even make sense. Banana Republic cotton is fine. I have a bunch of their shirts and machine wash cold and hang-dry and zero shrinkage. Did you put it in the dryer afterwards or something? Like I know that sounds dumb but I'm struggling to imagine what could have possibly caused what you describe. There's zero "enshittification" of the cotton at a brand like Banana Republic.

Do you find there's a difference in cotton quality with different shirt brands that results in some shrinking more than others?

Re: Why some clothes shrink in the wash and how to unshrink them

#165

Post by oslem »

stuxnet79 wrote: post #110
vyaa wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any brand recommendations?

Rather than focus on brand, I'd recommend developing a better eye and learning how to identify durable, high quality fabrics. While looking at the brand might be a good heuristic to rely on in the short term, the temptation is too high for vendors to take advantage of their brand power to offload cheaper fabrics for higher margins, I'm looking at you H&M and UNIQLO ...

H&M is awful, but Uniqlo has some great products that will last. I’m a big fan of a few of their t-shirts, especially the heavy cotton tees. You really gotta get your hands on each product to know what’s worth the money though.

Re: Why some clothes shrink in the wash and how to unshrink them

#166

Post by _whiteCaps_ »

cyberax wrote: post #134
soulofmischief wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem with polyester is the amount of microplastics which enter the water supply when washing them. It's an unacceptable amount.

Polyester is biodegradable, albeit slowly.

Unfortunately too slowly for salmon and other pollution sensitive species.

Re: Why some clothes shrink in the wash and how to unshrink them

#167

Post by copperx »

sva_ wrote: post #127
epolanski wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have recently started refusing to buy all of this plastic filled clothes. If I see any % of it I don't buy it. Period. I spend much more upfront for clothes, but I gain a lot long term. Clothes don't look terrible after few washings and they tend to last forever.

Pro tip: if your clothes say 100% merino wool or whatever, this is only about the fiber, and they may still be covered in plastic from the "superwash" process (for example, almost all merino wool is)

Oh, so that's why my fancy 100% Merino wool sweaters don't stink like wet dog when wet, like regular vintage wool sweaters? I know there had to something different in the manufacturing process.

Re: Why some clothes shrink in the wash and how to unshrink them

#168

Post by IAmBroom »

ynac wrote: post #51

I'm down to just a few sweat shirts and over shirts from the 80s, but they are hanging in there. Both the colors and the fabric. When the subject comes up with friends who ask about a particular shirt I joke, "The cotton was tougher back then". Recently, I've had jeans, shirts, and even socks that didn't make it through a single summer. Is anyone else freaked out about cleaning their dryer's lint filter given all the…

You are actually seeing something the linked article doesn't even mention: fiber length.

Not all cotton is created equally. "Egyptian cotton" was long prized because of the long fiber lengths. Cotton fibers are very smooth and slick, and only stay together in thread because of friction along their length as they lay with neighbor fibers (often twisted, where friction becomes exponential instead of linear). Short-fiber cotton is cheaper and easier to source; ergo, cheaper clothing tends to be made of it. Short fibers are also much more likely to slip within the thread under heat, lubrication, and motion (washing and drying). Obviously, they are also more likely to completely fall out of the thread, creating lint.

This is really only true for cotton and very similar fibers. Linen fibers are generally all multiple inches long, so there's less of a quality issue (they are made from rotting away everything but the longitudinal support fibers of the plant stalks).

Wool varies greatly in surface texture, especially after modern chemical processing, and fiber length isn't an issue because the fibers are also inch-long or better. It shrinks, however, because its friction is SO HIGH that it won't give up (stretch back) once it gets bound up.

Silk fibers super slick, but are several yards/meters long; a single cocoon is made from a single thread. They are much slicker than cotton (and therefore harder to hand-spin), but by the time they are made into thread they have plenty of surface friction maintaining their position in the thread.

Artificial fibers are as long as the production shift lasts, so effectively infinite.

Re: Why some clothes shrink in the wash and how to unshrink them

#169

Post by teruakohatu »

themafia wrote: post #153
ynac wrote: post #51

I'm down to just a few sweat shirts and over shirts from the 80s, but they are hanging in there. Both the colors and the fabric. When the subject comes up with friends who ask about a particular shirt I joke, "The cotton was tougher back then". Recently, I've had jeans, shirts, and even socks that didn't make it through a single summer. Is anyone else freaked out about cleaning their dryer's lint filter given all the…

Do not dry your cotton shirts in the dryer. It's as easy as that. You hang them up and let them air dry. They'll last forever.

In New Zealand, culturally people generally use dryers only when it is too wet to hang them outside. Dryers are seen as wasteful and destructive. T-shirts last longer but they do not last forever. Quality has gone down substantially.

Re: Why some clothes shrink in the wash and how to unshrink them

#170

Post by kazinator »

> Textile scientists and engineers are also working on fabrics that resist shrinkage through advanced material design. Among promising innovations are blended yarns that combine natural and synthetic fibres.

What odd language!

The fact that cotton-poly blends resist shrinking and wrinkling better than natural fibers has been known for like 80 years. While it may be that research continues, the "promising innovation" era of this category lapsed eons ago.

I'm also mystified why the article would not at least acknowledge the existence of something called pre-shrunk cotton, which is a material that is put through processes that cause shrinking before being measured and cut for clothing, to minimize further after-market shrinkage for the consumer.

Post reply on HN