After over a year of wear and home-laundering, these shirts still come out of the dryer looking absolutely pressed. Seriously! A sharp crease and a medium starch appearance. They are the best wrinkle free material I've ever seen.
I too have worn Bean shirts for many years. I miss the 60/40 blend and wish it were reintroduced. The all-cotton just don't wear as well and need more ironing. I fruitlessly search the internet hoping to find a shirt comparable to the old 60/40 Oxford cloth. I haven't found anything close.
I just came back from visiting my son, who was the recipient of one of these shirts for Christmas. I love to buy my grown children things from LLBean as gifts because I know they will receive a terrific product and will love it. He did love the shirt, but has confessed that the shirt came back from the laundry after less than a month with a small tear at the left of the collar. The laundry he uses reimbursed him the cost of the shirt, and he ordered a replacement from you. The replacement has now developed a tear where the cuff joins the sleeve on the right arm. I was ready to order him another couple shirts as a gift and asked him his color preferences when he shared information with me. I was so surprised to hear about the problem. It is the first time he has ever had any problems with shirts I have given him from you folks, and these incidents are the only ones he has had from the laundry that does his shirts. Help!!!
I've been wearing LLBean oxford cloth shirts for 35 or 40 years. I always bought the 60/40 poly-cotton blend, never felt the need to iron them, and was always very pleased.
In late 2005, after evacuating my home for Katrina and unable to return for almost two months, I ordered a couple of new shirts. At that time the poly-blend shirts had just been discontinued and replaced with these new wrinkle-free all-cotton shirts.
At first, I was 100% pleased. I had never seen a "wash-and-wear" garment of any kind that held its creases like these shirts, which always looked so sharp.
When I was able to return home, I found that most of my clothes escaped the flooding and were OK, including a half-dozen or more of my older LLBean oxford shirts. I continued to wear them regualrly, adding the two new shorts to my "rotation."
Now, less than four years later, the two shirts I bought in 2005 are drastically frayed, and torn completely open along several of those sharply-pressed creases. All of my older poly-cotton LLBean oxford shirts are in much better shape.
If I were still offered the option to choose between the poly-cotton blend and this new wrinkle-free cotton fabric, I would choose the blend for its proven durability. These new shirts look much better in the short run, but I am unhappy with their built-in obsolescence.
