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

181–190 of 287 posts

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

#181

Post by banku_brougham »

Loughla wrote: post #117
helterskelter wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$.02: - American Giant is pretty good for their pullover hoodies. They'll wear out at the cuffs first, but I've kept a single hoody in use for like five years with some repair stitching. - Standard Issue makes good waffle knit shirts. They'll last a few years depending on how often you wash them. - Duluth Trading makes some good cotton shirts and boxers. Quality has declined slightly, but they're the best plain cotto…

Darn tough for socks and Brunt for hoodies, I would add to this list. I'm hard on clothes and they survive me.

darn tough live up to the name. pendelton wool socks, icebreaker, smart wool all burnt out pretty fast.

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

#182

Post by Vrondi »

vyaa wrote: post #96
jazzyjackson wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's still good fabrics out there you just have to pay for them. I've mostly replaced my wardrobe now with natural undyed cottons and wools from the likes of "unbleached apparel" and "industry of all nations". There is cotton grown in new mexico, socks spun in north carolina. "Filson" makes a few things in Seattle. Don't skip the stuff made in Peru or India neither.

Do you have any brand recommendations?

Supima Cotton t-shirts from Lands End are great. Or, "100% Pima Cotton" from anyone else.

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

#183

Post by Vrondi »

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 ...

Along these lines, watch these two videos from Bernadette Banner to learn how to identify fabric types and learn how to identify quality features in clothing:

https://youtu.be/qtJ5ukWundY?si=xzOyiwrrt8oTgpii

https://youtu.be/fuVU64m1sbw?si=5reXwGwVu2j5pTL1

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

#184

Post by Vrondi »

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.

But I have 90s t-shirts that are just now dying after all these years of being dried only in an electric dryer, and other t-shirts just a few years old that are disintegrating. There's definitely been a quality change in the average shirt.

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

#185

Post by lemoncucumber »

banku_brougham wrote: post #181
Loughla wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Darn tough for socks and Brunt for hoodies, I would add to this list. I'm hard on clothes and they survive me.

darn tough live up to the name. pendelton wool socks, icebreaker, smart wool all burnt out pretty fast.

They also have a lifetime warranty which is great. With enough use their socks still eventually wear out, but you can get a new pair for free.

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

#186

Post by sitharus »

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…

I just try to buy natural or the semi-synthetic cellulose fabrics, there's quite a variety.

Natural fabrics are cotton, silk, wool and linen of course, but the semi-synthetic fabrics like the rayons (viscose, modal, "bamboo", Tencel, Lyocell, Bemberg, and some sorts of artificial silk) are wood cellulose chemically rearranged so they're just cellulose when they reach you.

The fabric referred to as Acetate is cellulose acetate, so not pure cellulose like cotton and rayon but is just as biodegradable and contains no petroleum plastics.

Of course the production process for viscose rayons (not Tencel/Lyocell/Modal - those use a different process) isn't great. It uses carbon disulfide which is a neurotoxin. However it's not a persistent pollutant. Modern factories in the west try to capture and recycle as much carbon disulfide as possible (it's released from the rayon during processing and can be fed back in to the process) but as a lot of factories are in countries with poor controls on this it's hard to tell how many are doing this.

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

#187

Post by rico_rodriguez »

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 ...

I went through an Uniqlo last month and was very disappointed at how just about every sort of basic article of clothing I was looking for was at least 30% polyester. Polyester has its place, the fact its not breathable and cheap does make it genuinely useful in moderation to help warm certain articles, but I don't want it in every single basic t shirt and pair of pants.

You can still get high quality or at the very least 100% Cotton clothes there but you'll have to seek them out and they know people will pay a premium for them so they tend to be 2x or more the price of the popular Airism t shirts for example.

I did give up entirely on trying to find outerwear there that was at least roughly >80% organic materials like cotton or wool which was probably my biggest disappointment. You can find nice basics with good quality fabrics at many brands. But Uniqlo 10 years ago was my favorite for wintertime because they're one of the few that had affordable coats and outerwear that made use of real wool + down with good quality lining, excellent heat-tech jackets that used a great blend of breathable fabric + artificial ones to keep you warm but not sweating. I've worn an Uniqlo duffel coat, peacoat, and several jackets every year for the better part of a decade and they still hold up excellent besides some pilling on the coats that I haven't fixed yet.

They don't even really seem to carry proper coats anymore in their stores nor decent jackets, everything seems like the cheap polyester fleeces and puffer coats that everyone else has.

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

#188

Post by [deleted] »

soulofmischief wrote: post #129
jjice wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

[deleted]

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

#189

Post by sitharus »

soulofmischief wrote: post #151
cyberax wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polyester is biodegradable, albeit slowly.

Citation needed.

Degradation Rates of Plastics in the Environment (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.9b06635) shows PET degrading very slowly in the environment. _Very_ slowly.

Researchers have found bacteria that do degrade PET using esterases though: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aad6359 and https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...

So I guess technically it's biodegradable? Though as it's an energy source give bacteria a few hundred years or so.

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

#190

Post by prmph »

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.

What I'm relating is 100% the truth, and I did not machine dry them after washing. I could not even believe my eyes when it happened, because I've been a customer of their dress shirts since like a decade ago and always relied on them for a precise fit.

I bought two of them, the ones that shrunk. They are labeled as wrinkle-resistant slim shirts, 98% cotton and 2% spandex.

Don't be mistaken, the quality of their apparel has definitely gone down of late. I went on Reddit and its definitely a thing people have noticed.

Post reply on HN