I just bought my first Ralph Lauren polo shirt. The care instructions are:
Machine wash warm with like colors.
Only non-chlorine bleach when needed.
Tumble dry low.
I can understand the bleach, but why is the shirt so flimsy that it can’t handle an average dryer? Also, why didnt they use a good quality dye so that it doesn’t run in the wash? I have t-shirts from the swap meet that are sturdier than this shirt. Its also 100% cotton like any other shirt I wear.
Am i missing something? It seems to me that I paid 99% of the price for the 1 inch logo on a $1 shirt that was tie-dyed at summer camp. Hippie summer camp.
Designer clothes tend to be pretty precious about the laundering instructions. I suspect that if you laundered this shirt like any other all-cotton polo you wouldn’t regret it. Ralph Lauren is dealing with persnickety customers, though, who might take wash wear amiss.
I haven’t the foggiest notion but my first guess would be that they use fixers and whatnot on the cheaper clothes to make them wash-sturdy at the expense of the feel of the fabric.
But I suspect it’s most likely your final supposition.
Most clothes made these days are more shoddy. I have Ralph Lauren polo shirts from the 90s that are still wearable. But any RL shirt I buy in the past few years seems to get frayed and discolored to the point of needing replacing after about a year.
Banana Republic is particularly flimsy. Their clothes seem to disintegrate within months. All my BR pants wear holes in the crotch in about a year. RL dress pants do seem more durable though.
Although Brooks Brothers and Thomas Pink shirts seem to last forever.
I don’t think it has anything to do with the brand or quality of the item.
I just looked at the tags on some of my clothes. I check about a dozen items from an Old Navy $6 tank top to an Ann Taylor blouse and a Ralph Lauren dressy knit shirt. Every single item, but one had exactly the same instructions you posted. The one item that did not say “Tumble Dry Low” was a pair of blue jeans which just said “Tumble Dry”.
I suspect, in general, it’s not necessary to use anything other than low on clothes these days.
**All **clothes wear and fade with continued washing and tumble drying, particularly natural material like cotton. Ralph Lauren are merely providing instructions to extend the look and life of your shirt.
But as to price… you will always pay a premium for a ‘label’ brand. Don’t we all know this? There are some things which are undoubtedly better quality in more prestige brands, such as suits where customers are prepared to pay a higher price for a better cut and cloth. But in a t-shirt? A cotton t-shirt is pretty much a cotton t-shirt, there’s only so much an expensive brand can add in quality terms.
That’s sort of ideal wash and dry for most clothing. Now if you decide to wash your red RL shirt with your white socks and get pink socks, or if you decide to dry using high heat and the shirt shrinks, then it’s not RL’s fault, because they told you so!
And how a large part of what has a “designer” label is not necessarily intrinsecally superior in materials to what does not have the label. It’s the style,the look, the cut that you’re paying a premium for.
But even superior materials will get aged prematurely by rough handling – So yes, technically that is how you should be laundering most of your dress or fine casual clothes anyway. Not throwing everything that’ll fit in the machine in one load and then running the dryer on maximum (a technique I believe many people learned at a point in life when it was important to get the laundry done using the least amount of coins ).
Very much so. Even if the RL shirt has no defects, if you put in some other item that has running dye, then the RL might very well emerge a different color.
Well, there is actually some difference in the kinds of cotton, both the species and the length of the fibers. Short staple threads (threads with shorter lengths of fiber in them) will be weaker and tend to pill much more readily than longer staple threads of the identical type of fibers. Even a plain cotton T shirt can be poorly made or can be of quite high quality. In one case, the shirt might pill when it’s first washed and disintegrate before the season is over. In the second case, the shirt might retain the color and cut through years of use, and never pill at all.
Yes, there usually is a premium price for a better label. There’s usually at least some difference in quality, though. You have to decide just how much you enjoy shopping for shirts every season.
).