welcome back to the gentleman's Gazette and to our complete guide about ironing
in this four-part series, we'll teach you how to iron a dress shirt, how to iron slacks,
chinos, or pants, as well as suit jackets or sport coats.
before we can do that we need to make sure you have all
the ironing tools you need and because of that, part one is dedicated to ironing essentials.
We will discuss everything that you need and all those things that you
can skip.
first of all, why should you learn how to iron?
It's always a skill that can come in very handy if you're in a place where no one else
can do it for you.
A nicely ironed shirt, a beautifully ironed lapel, or the crisp crease on your pants is
something that really can highlight the make and a quality of your garments.
At the same time, if your clothes are ironed properly, they will wear out prematurely and
they won't look the part.
so why shouldn't you just bring your shirts and suits to the local dry cleaner?
Most of the time, their machines don't really take care of your garments properly.
That way, your shirt colors wear out very quickly and the creases are just off.
Sometimes you get your suit jackets back with the lapel areas ironed flat and maybe you
end up with a crease in your sleeve that you never wanted.
if you're lucky enough to find a hand ironing service, chances are, the prices will be much
higher than your machine ironing.
also think about the money you put into your wardrobe you don't just want to throw your
investment away and keep items that last you as long as possible.
even if money is of no concern to you I still urge you to learn how to iron properly and
then maybe hire someone who you can teach so you get a much superior result from your
own home that is really better than anything else you can find from an ironing service.
before you can learn how to iron the proper way you need the right equipment.
in my opinion the first and most important thing you need for ironing is a proper ironing
board.
by that I mean, nothing flimsy but a really solid stand that won't just tip over.
I urge you to skip to 10 and 20 dollar ironing boards because they can't be adjusted to the
right height they are flimsy and over time they will break down much more easily.
an ironing board should also be long enough to fit the length of your entire slacks or
pants and most cheaper boards are very short.
you definitely want the free-standing board it's about 18 inches wide and at least 48
inches long.
they usually cost anywhere between 40 and $100 depending on the quality level you choose.
some come with features such as an iron rest which is quite handy or a cable feed which
is also quite advantageous because it prevents the cable from pulling and wrinkling your
shirts or your other garments while you iron them.
you also want a nice padded cover for the perforated metal surface because that way
the steam from your iron can go through and you'll get actually a better result in a shorter
amount of time.
definitely check the surface of the ironing board so you can't feel the surface underneath
otherwise you may end up seeing the pattern of the metal surface when you iron your shirt
and that's the last thing you'd wan.t I've used standard free-standing ironing boards
for years but I always wondered why professional tailors would get a much smoother result in
a much shorter time.
I found out the number one reason was that they used professional grade vacuum boards.
if you want a decent ironing job you need to have a steam iron.
on a regular freestanding board that steam will accumulate and sometimes get wet therefore
it slows down the ironing time and the result is not as smooth but sometimes rippled.
with a professional ironing board you get a vacuum engine that sucks the air through
the ironing board thus helping you to iron very quickly without any ripples.
cost-wise they start at five to six hundred dollars and go all the way up to several thousand
dollars
in my experience the lower end models are perfectly sufficient for in-home use.
I had my ironing board since 2010 and it's still in fantastic shape.
it cost me at $400 back then I think today a compare model will run about six hundred
dollars.
honestly vacuum boards are the single biggest secret when it comes to get a professionally
looking ironing results.
personally I take a vacuum board that cost five hundred dollars
paired with a 10 or $20 iron any day over a really expensive thousand
dollar iron with a quality freestanding non-vacuum board
the second item you have to invest in is of course the iron
while professional-grade irons usually have a gravity feed and are always quite expensive,
you can find irons starting at five dollars all the way up to five hundred or a thousand
dollars even for the personal sector.
now obviously the lower end models have fewer options but here's what you need.
the most important thing is that your iron has steam heat, the more steam the more powerful
the steam the better your iron is gonna be.
you also want an iron with a really smooth underside that is either ceramic coated or
has something else that makes it really smooth and easy to iron for you.
sometimes, ironing is also referred to as pressing and that's because of the weight.
heavier irons are better than lighter weight irons.
why? because it does the work for you and you don't have to push manually.
you definitely want your iron to have a nice tip traditionally you have just one tip sometimes
you'll also find them with two tips which should come in quite handy when you iron shirts
a lot and you want to get good results going back and forth without creating any extra
wrinkles.
if you have a vacuum board, you can't have enough steam holes and enough steam pressure
because the more steam you'll have, the better the result will be.
personally I have a professional-grade Japanese Hashima iron which I use for pants and suit
jackets but for my dress shirts, I use a regular $40.00 Panasonic iron.
the third thing you'll need is distilled water.
at least if you don't have a water softening system.
if you use regular tap water in your iron you will get a mineral build-up.
the mineral build-up inside iron but not only shorten its lifespan but more importantly,
you will end up with whitish grayish or brownish minerals that come through the steam holes
and stay in your shirt and may stain them and you have to wash them again and it's a
huge pain in the butt. sometimes you also want to spray your garments with water; most
irons come with a built-in spray head the problem ism they work very poorly and you'll
end up with a very moist spot in the middle but you want something that's distributed
and so I suggest to buy a misty spray bottle so you get a fine mist that is evenly
distributed across your garment.
now maybe you live in a place like I do where the water is very soft and there's very little
mineral build-up but in that case, I could just use tap water without having to worry
about any of this.
Four, invest in a pressing cloth.
if you have a regular iron it gets quite hot especially on a steam setting and you want
to protect your wool garments because otherwise, they get quite shiny.
so you lay the cloth in between the iron and the garment you want to iron.
I suggest you get with a hundred percent linen or cotton cloth that is lint free, you can
even use an old shir because they're very thin and they protect the wool garment from
the hot iron underside.
alternatively, you can invest in a professional solution which is a Teflon sole that you simply
hook on to your iron, in my opinion, it's totally worth the 10 to 20 dollars it costs
because it's really smooth and it protects your garment much better from the heat at
the same time your iron can produce all the steam it wants and the garment
will be pressed neatly.
again either the cloth or a Teflon sole work best with a vacuum board.
next up is not a necessity but a convenient add-on.
the so-called sleeve board.
it looks like a separate ironing board and it comes in very handy when you iron sleeves
so don't get the crease.
it's called sleeve board because it was designed for shirt and jacket sleeves but you can also
use it on smaller areas such as the waistband, maybe your pant leg, or anything else that
requires intricacy.
my sleeve board has a wider and a slimmer side so I can use it for a range of things.
you can find the link to the one I'm using on the website here.
The sixth item is a pressor or a tailor's ham it's not a necessity and it's some kind
of a cushion that looks a bit like a ham but it has rounded edges and because of that it's
very easy to iron the jacket shoulders, or the chest,or anything with round pieces.
because after all, when you iron on a flat board, you don't get the same result as if
you iron them on the round.
the version I use cost about $12 on Amazon but you can also invest in really expensive
tailor grade ones for several hundred dollars.
the seventh item is a so-called tailor's clapper or point press.
It is simply a wooden block with smooth edges that has some weight.
it's meant to help you get really crisp creases so once you iron the crease you add the wood
right afterwards push on it and the crease result will be much better than if you just
use your iron.
strictly speaking a tailor's clapper is not necessary but every professional I've met
swears by it because the creases are just sublime they cost about $20 but if you're
into woodworking, you can use any kind of oak wood that is about 12 inches or 30 centimetres
long about 3 inches or 7 to 8 centimeters wide.
the eighth thing you might want to consider is a steam press.
it's an item that you can really only use for one application which is getting the crease
into your pants and nothing else.
they usually cost $200 They are very boxy and big so I suggest you rather take that
cash and invest it into a quality vacuum board and you'll get much better results and you'll
thank me for it.
The ninth item you wanna invest in is a clothes steamer because usually, it produces a lot
more steam than your iron and it can be used especially on jackets after you wear them
or on pants to get rid of the wrinkles and refreshing them.
now I have one and I use it regularly.
if you don't have the space maybe just get an iron
because usually they also have a steam function and again take the money you saved invest
it into a vacuum board.
The tenth item you may want to consider is a linen spray it adds a deodorizing effect
to shirts and when you use it spray it on the inside of the shirt when you iron from
the outside so you avoid any possibilities of staining.
if you like starchy shirts, the spray starch you find at the grocery store won't do much
for you.
traditionally it starchy shirts would be all emerged in a starchy solution and you have
to make them out of rice starch and we won't go into that because it's very complicated
and it would be a subject of its own video.
last but not least I suggest you always have a large plastic bag handy it can be a garbage
bag because that way you can add dry shirts in there a little bit of water ideally with
a fine misty sprayer head if you don't have that just a regular water close it down let
it sit for half an hour and that way your garments get moist all over and ironing becomes
much more easy. of course you achieve the best results with just a slightly damp shirt
but we'll talk more about it in part 2 how to iron a dress shirt so stay tuned.
in today's video I'm wearing a variation on a double-breasted stroller without a waistcoat
I'm using a double-breasted grey flannel jacket which is really dark grey and that's why I
can wear it without a vest it's part of gray flannel suit for my pants I use a black and
white pair of houndstooth pants with cuffs a traditional stroller would not have cuffs
because it is a more formal garment but in this case I like the look I'm wearing it with
a white double cuffed dress shirt with cufflinks from Fort Belvedere which are carnelian red
and sterling silver which goes well with my carnelian red and sterling steel ring as well
as my red bowtie from Fort Belvedere because I'm
wearing a Fort Belvedere silk Rose boutonniere I'm simply going with a
plain white pocket square with hand rolled edges in a TV fold the socks I'm wearing are
grey with clocks and the shoes are black double monks which are tied
together by the socks and they go well with a jacket for an overall
rather formal outfit with this outfit I could easily show up to a board meeting to a formal
office meeting or to any kind of cocktail party and we always appropriately
dressed at the same time because of the combination it's not as
stiff and formal as a three-piece dark business suit