Care, Properly

Care, Properly

There is a moment, usually about a year in, when a garment either settles into something you will keep for a decade or begins the slow slide toward the back of a drawer. Almost always, the difference is how it was washed.

We say this without judgment, because most care labels are written to survive a lawsuit, not to actually help. Ours try to do the opposite. For linen, that means washing cold, on a gentle cycle, ideally by hand for anything with structure — a blazer, a tailored dress. Hot water breaks down the fibre’s natural give over time, which is what eventually makes linen feel brittle rather than soft. Hand-washing is not fussiness. It is simply protecting the thing you paid for.

Drying matters just as much. Line-dry out of direct sun, and resist the tumble dryer entirely if you can. Heat is the enemy of both linen’s fibre and its colour. A shirt dried flat, reshaped slightly by hand while damp, needs almost no ironing at all — the wrinkle relaxes rather than sets.

For the fleece line, the instinct is often to wash hot, on the theory that heavier fabric needs more force. It is the opposite. Cold water keeps the fibres from felting and the colour from fading, and it is gentler on the stitching we spent so much time getting right. Skip the dryer sheet, too — it coats the fibre in a residue that dulls the fabric’s warmth over repeated washes.

None of this is complicated, but it does ask for a little patience. In exchange, a garment stops being something you replace and starts being something you simply keep. That trade has always seemed worth making to us.