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.  We recommend laundering your shirts at home using the following 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 indicated above. Most important is to launder your shirts separately from other clothing. Usually the pilling appearance will actually subside as the pills finally shed off after several launderings. Also, hand-held clothes shavers are available which shave the pills off the fabric much like an electric razor.

A brownish or yellowish discoloration of collar tips is usually a result of detergent, bleach, 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, commercial drying methods and machine pressing are often harsh and damaging to shirts and buttons. So, while commercial laundering may be convenient, the equipment, the solvents used and level of care of the shop is critical, and commercial laundering may diminish the appearance and shorten the useful lifespan of your shirts.
 

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 a broken button on a shirt, it is nearly always a result of the commercial cleaners using too much pressure on 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 most often pressing dress shirts made from thinner fabrics and with no epaulets or pocket flaps.) Although they 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. We can provide spare buttons if replacements are needed.