Yes it is winter, a time for wool, in clothing at least. Linen has plenty of other uses, and it’s a good time to think about your warm-weather attire in any case.
Let’s address the most obvious question first. What happened to it? I will tell you. Machine-based wash and dry made it unviable and unfashionable. These days hardly anyone knows what it really means to wash and dry things. Yes we know how to stick things in machines and then something weird happens but we don’t know what. That’s about the whole of current knowledge.
Therefore, because linen doesn’t like machines, it was tossed out, forgotten.
People just stick their fake clothes in the machine and expect them to come out ready to wear. That’s why everything these days seems to be made of petroleum products rather than natural fibers. Have a look at the tags at even the high-end stores. You will be shocked: it’s all the same man-made fibers, no matter how much you spend and no matter what they are called.
This has been going on since the 1970s when it was imagined that there would never again be a need for irons and ironing boards. We were going full wash-and-wear. Fashion has never really recovered from that disaster. If it doesn’t wash-and-wear, people take things to professional laundries (dry cleaners) but those are so expensive and inconvenient that this is as common as it used to be.
No, the washer and dryer is it. If it doesn’t work there, people don’t buy it.
You simply cannot do this with linen. Good. Better. If you use a machine to wash linen, you are wasting your time and adding unwelcome stress. If you use a machine to dry linen, you might as well not wear it or use it at all. Machines utterly ruin everything wonderful about linen. It turns them puffy and pillowy, robbing them of their character. This grim reality might make you consider what else the machines are doing to the rest of your clothes!
As we have written about before, all that “lint” you are grabbing from the “lint catcher” is actually your clothes. This is why you end up throwing them out every year or two. Linen garments, on the other hand, if treated properly, can last two generations. No kidding. Plenty of historical records have people handing down underclothing to children, not to mention baptismal gowns and so on. It’s so incredibly durable.
So let’s start with the wash. If there is a stain, you can treat it with soap and peroxide before washing. Then fill up the sink or tub with warm water. Soak the linens for 15 minutes and then rinse in cold water. Do not do this with darks or other clothing. They deserve their own space. And that’s it. You are done.
Or maybe not entirely. Here’s a nice trick. You can get liquid starch (not the spray stuff!) and mix it in with the cold-water rinse. Lift the linen out and let it drip without wringing. You simply will not believe how firm and tough it turns out to be. You could stand it up like a piece of plywood after that. It’s a pure joy. Your napkins will be so perfect that your guests will be afraid to use them.
The drying is the fun part. Believe it or not, you will not have to use an iron at all, contrary to every lie you have been told about linen. You only need a drying rack or a clothesline, inside or out, doesn’t matter. The fabric will be completely dry in about an hour or two at most. This is far faster than cotton, wool, or any man-made fabric. I don’t understand how or why but there it is.
Here’s the kicker. It dries into a perfect pressed shape. There is no need for ironing at all. On the other hand, be careful how you shape it during the drying process. Whatever shape you put it in, it will take on that shape exactly. So, for example, if you have a linen tablecloth, you will want to drape it in a way that it forms a perfect line down the middle. That way when it is complete, the line will be preserved.
Same with pants or trousers or other table linens or anything.
Let’s address the elephant in the room: the wrinkles. You know this surely: if you sit down in a pair of linen pants and stand up, you will certainly have all kinds of creases at the knees. Surely this is bad? The answer: no, it is not bad. These are signs that you are wearing real, not fake, clothes. If anyone looks down on you, you can look down on them with even more condescending disdain.
Just kidding. That’s never nice. But the point remains: linen is a status fabric and linen wrinkles are status wrinkles. Take pride in that. If at the end of the day, everything is a crumpled mess, you can take a warm iron to them or simply wash the stuff again and let them all dry. They will be ready to go in no time.
There’s another interesting feature of all of this, and here we have to address a slightly sensitive subject. It concerns the human body. Pretty much everyone but professional models looks not great in clothing that clings too much to the lumps, bumps, and twists of the human body. This is because modern fabrics have no body of their own so they take on the shape of your body. Mostly for ill.
Linen doesn’t do this. It has its own shape. You are just there to be the thing on which the fabric hangs. Therefore it doesn’t reveal all your imperfections but quite the opposite. It creates an integrated silhouette out of the most peculiar of body shapes. That’s highly welcome to the eyes.
I will promise you this. A table dressed in linen is like no other. Everyone knows this. It’s leagues above cotton and no comparison to polyester. Even if your guests don’t understand entirely why or how, the ethos of linen exudes from the fabric itself to inhabit the entire space, creating luxurious elegance out of even the most humble abode.
Let’s just face a growing reality. There are many ways in which the postmodern world has failed us. Everyone seems to be striving, clamoring, grasping for a way back, with ever more forms of nostalgia coming back into our daily lives, in music, literature, design, and everything. And yet we often do not know where to begin.
I’m telling you: acquiring some linen item is a perfect way to achieve this. It becomes a hobby with a huge payoff. Take a look at eBay right now and look up linens of any sort. You might as well start with a nice tablecloth. You simply will not believe the prices (unless this article goes viral!). You can get 50–80 year old linens for a song (make it Cole Porter) and then you are ready to go.
You can begin your own experiments with hand washing and drying and rediscover what it means to mix your own labor with what you wear and what is on your table. Also by doing this, you can connect your ancestors, all the way back to the Founding Fathers, who loved linen because it grows so well in the United States and afforded economic independence from the British Crown.
She sits in an arm-chair, under the shaded porch of the farmhouse,
The sun just shines on her old white head.
Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen,
Her grandsons raised the flax, and her granddaughters spun it with the distaff and the wheel.
