The wear life of any garment is greatly influenced by its care.  Even with the best of care, of course, all fabrics will eventually wear out.  But "eventually" can be a little later if shirts are given a few considerations to help prolong their useful life.  If laundering your shirts at home, we recommend these guidelines:

Pilling is the formation of little balls (pills) of fiber on the surface of the fabric, resulting from contact, abrasion, and wear. As fabric gets rubbed, short or broken cotton fibers are pulled away from the yarn and rise to the surface of the fabric and gather to form pills. The stronger polyester fibers tend to hold on to these pills, preventing them from shedding off.  Pilling is most noticeable in areas that receive the highest wear and abrasion, such as inside the collar band, under arms, on cuffs, and where the seat harness rubs on the upper chest area. While pilling occurs unavoidably in all fabrics, it can be minimized with reasonable care and proper handling during laundering.  As our instructions indicate, it is most important to launder your shirts separately from other clothing, and it's best to avoid tumble drying altogether.  Usually the pilling appearance will actually subside as the pills finally shed off after repeated launderings. Also, hand-held clothes shavers (similar to an electric razor) are available which shave the pills off the fabric .

A brownish or yellowish discoloration of collar tips is usually a result of detergent, bleach (especially in hard water), softener or soil residue that has built up in the collar tips where the thickness of several layers of fabric makes rinsing more difficult.  This residue can cause discoloration by itself, but it is exacerbated by the heat of drying and pressing/ironing... often taking on a scorched appearance. An old or commercial dryer that runs very hot can sometimes scorch the tips.  Once this discoloration has taken place it is virtually impossible to remove, and attempts to bleach it out usually just makes the discoloration worse.  Prevention is the key here; avoid using too much detergent and once again, rinse with plenty of clean water.

Commercial laundering typically uses strong solvents or a strong alkali/detergent in very hot water for cleaning. Likewise, machine pressing is often harsh and damaging to shirts and buttons. So, while commercial laundering can be effective and convenient, the cleaning fluids, the equipment, and the level of care taken by the shop is critical in determining the appearance and  longevity of your shirts.  The best cleaners are rarely the cheapest shops.
 

All of the buttons used on all the shirts we sell are high-grade uniform spec buttons, made to withstand normal and reasonable heat and pressure from commercial laundering, We sell thousands of shirts per year and broken buttons are generally a rare occurrence.  If you experience broken buttons on your shirts, it is nearly always a result of the commercial cleaners exerting too much pressure with their presses. This problem is exacerbated due to the thicker, multiple layers of fabric found on uniform shirts that have flap style pockets, epaulets and lined button plackets as found on pilot shirts. (The cleaners are usually pressing dress shirts made from thinner fabrics and with no epaulets or pocket flaps, and may not alter their settings or technique as required for thick pilot shirts.)   In our experience, it is almost exclusively the extra thickness of our oxford fabric, along with the thickness of the velcro under the pocket flap, that seems to create the biggest challenge for these press operators.  (We never see the problem on shirts that are laundered at home, even when banging around inside the steel drum of a hot clothes dryer.)  The assumption that the buttons must be fragile or faulty is refuted by the fact that A) the exact same buttons used on pilot shirts made from thinner pinpoint fabric virtually never experience breakage, B) these same buttons are used successfully on uniform shirts (of, once again, thinner fabrics) made for other professions as well, and C) we sell thousands of shirts per year to thousands of pilots, yet broken buttons are limited to shirts possessed by a relatively small number of individuals, while the vast majority of identical buttons on the vast majority of shirts remain intact.  Clearly, it is specific to the pressing technique of certain cleaning shops.  Some may still hold the opinion that the buttons should be strong enough to withstand the herculean force being applied at those cleaners, but as the search continues for an indestructible button for uniform shirts, the fact remains: With reasonable attention and care, any conscientious professional cleaner is quite capable of pressing any uniform shirt without breaking buttons. Although some are notoriously reluctant to do so, your commercial cleaner should accept responsibility for buttons that break during pressing and they should replace buttons for you.  If they don’t, you should find another shop.  Remember, the best shops are rarely the cheapest.  We can provide spare buttons if replacements are needed.