How to Iron a Dress Shirt Neck

Video Transcript

"Hello, I'm Donna Beth Joy Shapiro on behalf of ExpertVillage.com and today I'm going to show you how to iron a shirt. In this clip, we are going to talk about how to start ironing a man's cotton dress shirt. You always start with the collar, the back of the collar. The first thing you want to do is to make sure that the plastic stays are out. If you iron over them, you are going to melt them. You really should take them out before you launder the shirt. But, if you forget, they'll probably still be in there, so pull them out. And then what you want to do, if you are using starch, is spray it a little bit. It's best to give it a few seconds to let he starch permeate the fabric. Better-made shirts will not have all of this extra fabric. Better-made shirts are a lot nicer than this. It can be pretty difficult to iron a shirt that isn't...well, the most expensive shirt that you would buy at Nordstrom. You probably won't be able to get this totally smooth. Flip it over and spray it again. One thing, you want to make sure and not let the iron linger on the collar. I've ruined many-a-shirt by letting the iron stay too long and burning the collar. Once that's done, the shirt is history. The other thing is that it is probably the collar that takes the most abuse on a shirt. You'll notice that in a man's cotton dress shirt, it wears out generally first at the collar. It takes a lot of abuse from an iron. If you are sending your shirts to a dry cleaner, they will look great, but they aren't going to last as long. You also want to make sure that you get this part here in case the man opens his shirt. You want it to be nicely ironed. Thanks for watching. "