# Why the hatin' on blends?



## frosejr (Mar 27, 2010)

I've read a number of posts in both the Trad forum and Fashion forum speaking poorly of blended fabric for dress shirts. I was surprised that the brands that most Trad mens shops now sell, like Enro, have mostly blended shirts if they are must-irons.

Recently I came across a batch of 70/30 shirts on ebay. They are Dillard's house brand, Roundtree and Yorke. Some of them appear to be many years old. 

The shirts wash up nice-looking without ironing, and without yucky chemicals to make it non-iron. 

Some posters have commented in the past that these shirts are hotter because of the polyester content. I have not noticed it that way.

What do you think are the pros and cons of blended shirts? If they are so terrible, why do so many distinguished mens shops carrying them?


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## Oldsarge (Feb 20, 2011)

Beats me. There seem to be those here who a) have such sensitive skin that nothing but the most rarefied pure cotton will do, b) actually _like _ironing c) are willing to pay more for the privilege of paying more or d) are intimidated by the vehemence of the previous three categories. Personally, I think ironing is something that happens to other people, am perfectly comfortable in 60/40 or 70/30 blended fabric and am delighted with the fact that I can get MTM shirts in those cloths for the same price as a Lands End OTR.

And if you ask Andy, he concurs.


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## Youthful Repp-robate (Sep 26, 2011)

Some people find poly irritating, me included. I won't wear anything over 55/45, and I'm much more likely to wear an undershirt with a blended shirt. I don't think it wears much hotter. I'd say weave and weight still make more of a difference, though the fiber content is a factor.

Blends, in general, are more boring than natural fibers. For poplin or twill shirt fabric, they're okay (at 55% of the price), but wool-poly suiting just lacks omphh. I can tell a poly-blend suit from an all-wool suit in a moment, and I prefer the wool every time. I won't thrift poly-blend shirts, unless they're just right (I have a 60/40 BB poplin unlined BD which is pretty nice). Blends don't seem to wear in right, either. The seem to roll along perfectly until they just sort of die on you, which means you miss out on the nice feeling of wearing well-worn clothes.

I also think there might be a bit of classism in play -- if not necessarily on here, than among certain members of society. I've been informed that polyester is for poor people by awful, tacky women with Laura Ashley Total Design Concept living rooms, for example. "No blends" is a big rule in the OPH, too.


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## hookem12387 (Dec 29, 2009)

I like "the rumple" of cotton. I do have a "mall era" Gant shirt that's part poly that I wear a lot in the fall, though, and like just fine. I also wear 80/20 tshirts to work out pretty frequently, where the poly helps keep the sweat from weighing the shirt down. I don't hate the stuff, I just don't love it.


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## Topsider (Jul 9, 2005)

Blends invariably look like crap, feel like crap, and wear like crap.

Three strikes. Yeeeeeeeer out!


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## Taken Aback (Aug 3, 2009)

Some time ago, I posted a review of LE's Hyde Park in 60/40 as compared to the 100% cotton variety. Both being an oxford weave, the difference was not very apparent, and I didn't notice any during wear (not that I've worn them much). They sell for less, so it wasn't as if I felt cheated.

Blends tend to shrink less, I suppose.


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## Topsider (Jul 9, 2005)

By way of full disclosure, I have a vintage Sero blended OCBD that I found at a thrift store. I wear it under a sweater. I also give a permanent pass to Reyn Spooner's "Spooner Cloth" fabric, used in classic Hawaiian shirts (in popover OCBD, of course).


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## phyrpowr (Aug 30, 2009)

Could be an age thing; for some of us (age 61 my own self) blend, for the longest time, meant a heavier stiffer poly-something, and normally cheaply made (LLBean did a nice 60/40 OCBD with flap pocket, though). Same as "fused" in a coat meant "guaranteed to bubble". Lots of improvement since the '60s, and I wouldn't pass up a nice garment _*solely *_because it was a blend


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## Flanderian (Apr 30, 2008)

frosejr said:


> I've read a number of posts in both the Trad forum and Fashion forum speaking poorly of blended fabric for dress shirts. I was surprised that the brands that most Trad mens shops now sell, like Enro, have mostly blended shirts if they are must-irons.
> 
> Recently I came across a batch of 70/30 shirts on ebay. They are Dillard's house brand, Roundtree and Yorke. Some of them appear to be many years old.
> 
> ...


Cotton/poly shirts used to get beat up in routine home laundering and pill badly. They also tended to look cheap and flimsy when being worn. If yours exhibit neither of those characteristics, more power to you! I love cotton/poly PJ's and don't find anything else remotely as comfortable. Same with bedding. And I have two older, high quality trench coats, one from Burberry and one Brooks, that have continued to wear very well, shed wrinkles and look great!

The main problem with cotton/poly is that it has become much harder to find, and high quality cotton/poly is almost impossible to find.


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## Taken Aback (Aug 3, 2009)

Flanderian said:


> Cotton/poly shirts used to get beat up in routine home laundering and *pill badly*.


I knew I wanted to say something else, and that was it. It's been some time since I wore a blend with any frequency (Those blend HP's have seen 5-6 wearings), but I remember experiencing some pilling in the armpit on one when I did. I know I formed an "Ew" even if I didn't utter it. Socks and underwear may pill, but neither shirt nor pants ever should.


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## Himself (Mar 2, 2011)

Blends don't get enough respect. IME they're way more comfortable than current non-iron "all cotton' (I can't believe they call it that).

I wore a lot of blended shirts in the 80s, and as Taken Aback noted -- they're fine. They do pill though, and do not age gracefully.

I still wear blended polo shirts, for hot, sweaty work and for mountain biking.

People pay big money for "high tech" blended shirts from brands like Patagonia and Mountain Hardwear.

Then there's Reyn Spooner, some of the most comfortable shirts ever and practically indestructible. Many people assume they're all-cotton but Spooner Cloth is a 60/40 blend.


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

No hatin' from me. Although most of my shirts are 100% cotton, I find that the most comfortable ones and both easiest to wear and easiest to care for are blends. So much so that I now look for blends rather than 100% cotton.


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## dkoernert (May 31, 2011)

Earl of Ormonde said:


> No hatin' from me. Although most of my shirts are 100% cotton, I find that the most comfortable ones and both easiest to wear and easiest to care for are blends. So much so that I now look for blends rather than 100% cotton.


Same here. Most of my shirts are 100% as well, but I do have a handful of blends. I find them to be most useful when I am running late in the morning and forgot to iron the night before.


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## eagle2250 (Mar 24, 2006)

Depending on the blend, a pure cotton shirt does seem to wear a bit more comfortably (cool) than does the shirt crafted of a poly heavy blended fabric. Though the blend may look a bit more pristine while being worn, the 100% cotton shirt just feels better, sometimes!


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## Tom Buchanan (Nov 7, 2005)

No hate here. My father used to wear some of the old Brooks blended shirts and I had a couple long ago. If you like them, enjoy them.

The real question is, what advantage does a blend shirt give? If you are in a profession where a pressed shirt is expected, the blend does not look pressed out of the dryer, and in my experience, did not look as good when pressed. As stated above, I think the blend wears a bit warmer as well and the old ones did pill. To me, they do not look as good as a pure cotton, but that could be biased.

One area were I think blended fabrics were great was for suits. For years, a "poly-wool" blend (85% wool, 15% poly) was rather standard at many trad clothiers, particularly for the lighter weight suits. They wore very well. I have often wondered if clothiers really switched to all wool because of advances in fabrics, or if they were more influenced by the public perception that polyester was bad.


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## Flanderian (Apr 30, 2008)

Tom Buchanan said:


> One area were I think blended fabrics were great was for suits. For years, a "poly-wool" blend (85% wool, 15% poly) was rather standard at many trad clothiers, particularly for the lighter weight suits. They wore very well. I have often wondered if clothiers really switched to all wool because of advances in fabrics, or if they were more influenced by the public perception that polyester was bad.


In the early '70's, I had several suits in wool/poly blends. Most if not all were intended as warm weather suits, and they served quite well in that regard. But I found that high quality, high-twist tropical wool had most of the same properties, and tended to look better/richer than even a fine quality blend.

The blend also had a couple of notable qualities compared to even fine tropical worsted. The first was desirable; wrinkles in blends would hang-out more quickly and completely. The second was not. If you smoked, as I then did, the jacket front of your blend would develop pinholes from tiny coals that fell from the tip of your lit cigarette. The result was an appearance that resembled a very fine gauge Swiss cheese.


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## zzdocxx (Sep 26, 2011)

Flanderian said:


> a very fine gauge Swiss cheese.


Mmmm, Swiss cheese. . .

Back to fabrics though. I ordered a shirt from Hemranjani/mytailor in a 70/30 cotton poly blend, I believe it was. That was after going through a bunch of swatches in my price range. The reason I liked it was because it just seemed a little thicker, with a little more body to it, than the other fine cotton fabrics.

I was trying to find something like my step-father's shirts I used to borrow way back when, I loved the feel of them! But am still not sure of what they were made. I'm sure it was something just off the rack, but it was smooth yet crisp, and not particularly thin. Great feel and form to hide my imperfections!

The Hemranjani shirt, I haven't worn it yet, it seems nicely made. I am not knowledgeable enough to compare the fit with the Brooks Brothers shirts I purchased recently. The Hemranjani shirt, for which I was measured by Joe Hemranjani, seems a little looser both around the chest and waist.

All right that is a different subject, sorry! ! !


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## Larsd4 (Oct 14, 2005)

Personally, blends feel clammy to me, as does non-iron cotton. Plus, nothing matches the look of a pressed OCBD toward the end of the day with its creases showing the battle scars of the day. Not rumpled, not freshly pressed, but worn in the arena.


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## dcjacobson (Jun 25, 2007)

I had many blended shirts when I got out of college. Here's why I ending up disliking them:
1. They were misery in hot weather.
2. They pilled.
3. They came back from the laundry puckered around the collar and cuffs, not neat and crisp as did cotton shirts.

I'm surprised to hear that blended dress shirts are still available--I thought they went the way of the dodo bird. I haven't seen any in years (all of the no-wrinkle shirts I have seen are 100% cotton). If you want a no-wrinkle shirt that's high quality, go to Brooks Brothers. They do it better than anyone. They don't feel plasticky and they come out of the dryer perfect. You don't even need to touch them up with an iron. Perfect you AAACers who travel.

Don't get me started on the Lands End noniron shirts.

Good luck,
Don


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## Titus_A (Jun 23, 2010)

frosejr said:


> The shirts wash up nice-looking without ironing, and without yucky chemicals to make it non-iron.


False: polyester = "yucky chemical."

No fake fibers. That is all.


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## Sir Cingle (Aug 22, 2009)

I have some blend shirts, even though I prefer 100% cotton. Frankly, I'm lazy and sometimes I don't want to iron. In addition, I find that blend shirts are good for traveling. I prefer a cotton-poly blend to a current non-iron shirt.

But, as others have suggested, blends have their downsides: I find them hotter and less comfortable than all cotton, they tend to pill, and they don't look quite as good as all cotton.


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## P Hudson (Jul 19, 2008)

I think it is because part of the trad ethic relates to being genuine (whatever that means). Cotton wrinkles, leather develops a patina, linen creases, silk crumples, wood ages, metal rusts, etc. Plastic doesn't really do any of that. On another site somebody is debating the virtues of amps with tubes vs modern technology, and on yet another site, somebody is arguing that fountain pens are superior to roller balls. Every clique has its purists.

Having said all that, if I could find a vintage machine washable Brooks sack for the right price, I'd certainly give it a try.


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## Flanderian (Apr 30, 2008)

I suspect the comparative dearth of poly compared to its hay-day may have something to do with its main ingredient; oil. Once a cheap raw material. Now *not* such a cheap raw material.


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## dcjacobson (Jun 25, 2007)

> Having said all that, if I could find a vintage machine washable Brooks sack for the right price, I'd certainly give it a try.


I had two of those, purchased in 1988. I never put them in the washing machine--that seemed to good to be true.

Good luck,
Don


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## Doctor Damage (Feb 18, 2005)

Flanderian said:


> The main problem with cotton/poly is that it has become much harder to find, and high quality cotton/poly is almost impossible to find.


You're right about that. Blends don't have to be horrible, but too often they are. And I've seen 100% cotton garments which look terrible, so it cuts both ways.


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## oxford cloth button down (Jan 1, 2012)

I have had some blends that aren't bad. However, I have some and it may just be the non-iron finish, but they feel like plastic. I almost always opt for 100% percent must iron cotton. Plus, I always thought that your clothes were supposed to wrinkle.


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## zzdocxx (Sep 26, 2011)

Thinking about this thread, I wore my Hemranjani/mytailor shirt for the first time today. My cleaning lady had washed and ironed it.

It is cut a but looser all around than the shirts I bought from Brooks Brothers, and I didn't like that at first. I'm still not sure about the fit, but *the fabric is lovely*, and the sewing detail seems really nice. I'm not an expert so I can't really say though.

But I just like it! ! !

Have to wait and see if the fabric pills I suppose. The shirt was around $90 - 100 MTM.

I think it is a 70 - 30 cotton/poly blend.


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## L-feld (Dec 3, 2011)

Does anyone have any experience with cotton/poly poplins? I am considering ordering a Poplin suit from Hardwick in a 55/45 blend.

I am worried that it will be hot and won't do its job of keeping me cool. Should I stick to the silk/wool blends for my summer suits?


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## Flanderian (Apr 30, 2008)

L-feld said:


> Does anyone have any experience with cotton/poly poplins? I am considering ordering a Poplin suit from Hardwick in a 55/45 blend.
> 
> I am worried that it will be hot and won't do its job of keeping me cool. Should I stick to the silk/wool blends for my summer suits?


I've had suits of both blends and found cotton/poly significantly cooler. My experience is that silk/wool blends are not particularly cool. In fact, they're a good deal warmer than a fine quality tropical worsted.

Contrary to popular belief, which may have been prompted by cotton industry advertising of 30+ years ago, I've never experienced cotton/poly blends as warmer. I've always found them cooler than equivalent all-cotton cloth, and I'm a guy who tends to overheat easily. However, both cotton/poly and cotton cloth will unfortunately come saturated with sizing which stiffens the cloth and also makes it much less breathable, and therefore much warmer.

I recommend cleaning tailored clothing as infrequently as possible. But I make an exception for cotton/poly or cotton summer suits. Upon cleaning a substantial portion of the sizing will be removed. An additional cleaning normally removes the rest. If the suit initially doesn't perform as you wish, a high quality cleaner will remove most of the sizing, and the suit should be cooler and more breathable.


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