My Wool Trousers Shrank - What To Do When Your Pants Shrink In The Wash - Dress Slacks
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Hi!
I'm Antonio Centeno, the founder of Real Men Real Style.
Today, I'm going to be trying to help a reader who sent me an email.
Basically, he put his wool trousers into the dryer and they shrank.
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So the question that came in, the gentleman's asking me -- basically, he bought this nice
pair of trousers.
He didn’t specify they were wool, but I'm assuming they're wool.
He put them in the dryer and they shrank.
It could be cotton, and so what I'm going to say can still be in a way applied to cotton.
But cotton, you don't normally see them -- because of their higher quality -- shrink that much
unless you have a really hot dryer perhaps.
Let's talk about how should you care for and treat wool trousers or any type of high-end
dress slacks or dress clothing.
Number one, read the label.
I know it's too late for the gentleman who sent me the question, but always look at the
label and follow what it says.
Now, if it says dry cleaning -- I know it's a little bit harder for a lot of people especially
when you don't have access.
You can do some spot cleaning.
Oftentimes, we'll send things and we'll wash them almost too much.
Yeah, do a little bit of spot cleaning if you can't get it to a dry cleaner.
And if you're really confident in taking care of clothing, perhaps you know someone who
has explained to you how to do some of this stuff, you can do some at-home cleaning, but
you need to be careful and know what you're doing especially with sweaters.
Okay, so you've got this pair of trousers.
It has shrunk in the waist, maybe a little bit tighter in the seat area, so what can
you do?
Well, we can try to reverse the process.
Why did this shrink?
Let's really get down to it.
If this is wool, then basically what we've seen are either the fiber -- it could be a
combination of this as well, but basically, the fibers have come in closer together.
If it was exposed to high heat, we could even see the actual nature of the hair, of the
proteins that make up that hair that could've been de-natured.
If that happened, basically that's like frying an egg.
You can't go back to the state it was at before.
In that case, there is very little we can do if you've actually really heated it up
and really damaged that fabric, but most likely, it's not that state.
It sounded like you could get them on almost, but they were just too tight.
They weren't where they were before.
In this case, you may have a chance to be able to help separate the yarns and be able
to spread out the fabric, give it the feel it had before.
What he's going to want to do is take those trousers and first visit a professional.
If you have money and you don't have time for this, go to a professional cleaner.
They often have ways of trying to stretch those back out, but that's basically what
you're going to be doing by hand if you don't have access to a professional or you don't
want to spend the money and you want to try to do it yourself.
You're going to take them and you're going to put them into cool water, but with that
cool water, you've mixed hopefully something like Woolite.
If you don't have access to Woolite, go purchase some.
Let's say you can't even get any access to Woolite, then use a hair conditioner.
What you're looking to do is to soften up the fibers and you're going to physically
start to try to stretch the trousers back out.
Again, you're putting these in cool water, the reason being heat, even warm water, will
cause wool to shrink, so you're applying pressure trying to stretch out the trousers.
This can take a little bit longer.
It's a little bit longer of a process.
Again, in the cool water, continue to try to stretch those out.
Then after a couple minutes of this, you can put them out to dry.
Once they've dried, try them on.
If it helped and it's not still at the point you want them to be, you're going to probably
have to repeat the process.
If it's not even close, then consider taking them to a professional.
Now, you may be asking, "Why can't I just open up the trousers and, in a sense, let
out some material?"
Well, you can do that, but the problem is that if these did shrink, the distance between
the seams where it was sewn, that could've been altered as well.
And so, you may have actually marks in the clothing, so when you open it up, you may
have little marks on there, but that's better than having to throw these trousers away.
It's not the perfect solution.
It is something that's a bit time-intensive.
It doesn’t work if the trousers are really damaged.
However, if this is just a small shrinkage, you can get back to that.
Cotton is really good in the sense of actually when you wear it and you stretch on it.
Jeans, actually you can wear them a little bit tighter and they stretch out over time.
Cotton, I would suggest just putting them on and trying to stretch them out a bit.
Now, you have to be careful because if the seams aren't really tight there, you could
just tear open the trousers.
It's better to tear them open though at the beginning than at the end, but with cotton,
it's going to be better to probably try to just wear it and to just stretch them out
that way.
Here's a little interesting fact.
Wool actually loses 3% of its strength in cool water while cotton gains strength in
water.
So if you wet the cotton and tried to follow that procedure, it's actually going to be
tougher than if you've left it dry.
Hopefully that helps you out.
There are some other things out there.
Again, visit a professional.
They deal with this stuff day in and day out, and there are lots of other little tricks,
which I'm not going to get into because I haven't tested them, but go see a professional
if you can.
If you've got a question, you know where to go, mensstyleqa.com.
I am trying to get back to people in the YouTube comments, but YouTube comments are broken.
So instead, I created this Q&A website where you can go ask good questions and I'll try
to answer them.
The best questions, I'll answer in a video.
See you guys in the next video.
Bye-bye.