How to Wash Dress Socks

Transcription

Hi I'm Kirby Allison and welcome to my home. In this video I'm going to discuss with you my techniques on how to lander your high-quality luxury dress socks. Our Sovereign Grade Luxury Dress Socks will last you a long time if you take proper care of them. And in this video, I'm going to show you exactly how to do that. If you have any questions during this video, please feel free to ask them in the comments section below. I get back to all those questions personally. Many people think that a really high-quality pair of finely knitted dress socks can't last a long time and it couldn't be any farther from the truth. High quality luxury dress socks are by design fine. But it doesn't mean that they have to be delicate. With a little bit of special care and attention you can keep your dress socks looking great for years. With the technique that I've developed not only will you increase the longevity of your socks but you're going to prevent them from becoming fuzzy and developing lint.

The proper way to launder your socks is to only launder them with dress socks and nothing else. Second, turn them inside out before you wash them. Third, ensure that you wash them on a delicate cycle with cold water. And lastly always hang dry your socks and never dry them through a dryer. The high heat of a drying cycle causes the natural fibers of a fine sock to break down prematurely. And also, the elastic band at the top to lose its elasticity. So, in addition to improper laundering, the second most common reason that people have to throw away their socks prematurely is because they fail to clip their toenails and they wear holes at the end of their socks. But now, of course, this is very easily avoided by just keeping your toenails trimmed. But if it does occur don't throw away a pair of perfectly fine socks. You can simply fix the hole by mending or darning it using a darning egg a needle and some thread. And we have a video here at the Hanger Project on our YouTube channel showing you exactly how to do that. I actually enjoy laundering my socks. I find it quite therapeutic and it's surprisingly simple.

So here I am with my laundry basket that I keep in my closet. Now, this laundry basket is dedicated to the items that I'm not laundering frequently. Basically, my shirts and my dress socks. So, I like to sort through here doing two things. First, all my dress socks I'm going to turn inside out and just quickly make sure that there are no holes. Now, I like to match my socks to ensure that I have a proper pair before I put it into the laundry machine because there's nothing more frustrating than sorting all your socks out after you've laundered them to discover that you're missing a sock. So, sorting through my socks. Also, this is a great opportunity to ensure that you don't have any sports socks or any other socks that might lint that you're going to include your dress socks. Again, one of the most important things that you can do to keep your socks looking new is to launder them only with dress socks and turn them inside out.

Here's a dress shirt. I like to set these aside and sort which dress shirts and my goodness send are Fabric Care which are primarily my Charbray shirts and then which shirts am I going to launder locally. And those are normally my Hemrajani. And then here you can see I left a pair of collar stays in this shirt. So, that was a mistake. Normally I remove these at the end of the day but sometimes a pair slips past me. And I like to just inspect the shirt before I sent it off to the dry cleaners.

So, I'm going to set that aside and just continue working through your socks turning them inside out. You might be inclined to cut a corner by not turning your socks inside out. But I can't stress enough how important this is to keep your socks lint free and preventing them from looking fuzzy.

So, you'll probably notice that in most of my videos I prefer to wear a white dress shirt. And that's because there's nothing more versatile or elegant than a nicely pressed white dress shirt. I've recently been adding a lot of Charvet white dress shirts to my wardrobe. And this is really something I feel like with age and experience I've come to appreciate more than I did whenever I was young.

So, once I have a matching pair I'll throw these on the floor. But as I'm sorting through my socks and turning them inside out you know keep them on my knee or separate until I pull out a complete matching set. I find that ensuring that you have a matching set before you put them in the laundry machine really saves you a lot of the frustration that occurs whenever you realize that you don't have a complete set. Also, I'll wash all of my wool and cotton socks in the washing machine, but I really do prefer to hand wash my cashmere socks just because again cashmere is quite delicate and that extra level of care that you can get just washing them by hand really makes a big difference in just preventing them from becoming fuzzy too quickly. So, I'm at the bottom of my laundry basket. And as you can see I've got two socks here that don't have that matching pair. Inevitably this happens every single time I'm going through my laundry basket. And so, what I'll do is I'll put these socks in the washing machine and get those started and then I'll take these two upstairs and spend a little bit of time searching for the missing culprit.

Whenever I launder my dress socks at home I like to use a really high-quality laundry detergent. It's important to not just use a high-quality laundry detergent light laundry detergent and so the Laundress is a company based in New York that is really developed some exceptional laundry detergents. And what I like about it is they have a really large range of detergents for very specific purposes. So, whenever I'm laundering my socks I really prefer to use the detergent that they have just for darks because it's going to do the best job preserving the colors that I want to keep in my socks. Another the detergent that I appreciate from the Laundress is there wool and cashmere shampoo and I use this exclusively if I'm hand washing my cashmere socks. These and all the Laundress products are available on HangerProject.com. Click the link in the description to shop all the laundress products that we sell here at Kirby Allison's Hanger Project.

Now that the socks are done with the washing machine the last step is to turn them right side out and then hang them up to dry on a proper drying rack. A simple dry rack like this one right here is an essential accessory for anyone that is doing the laundry at home. As much as you can avoid the dryer with your clothing the better. Just the high heat and the temperature of a dryer is just hard on the natural fibers of really anything. So, the more that you can avoid that the better. So again, while I'm doing this I'm trying to match the pairs and so I'm turning them right side out and you can see if there's any residual lint in the washing machine itself it's going to collect on the interior of the sock because you turned it inside out. So, whenever you turn it right side out you're going to see that there's no lint accumulated at all. I like to smooth my socks out just so that they dry flat and then just simply hang them like this. Okay so now that I finished turning all of my socks right side out and I've got them paired and matching pairs then I'm going to allow them to dry overnight. Now once they've dried I'll come back and I'll put the pairs together. I like to roll my socks by folding them in half and then rolling them all the way down over the shaft and then what I do is I just put them in my sock drawer like this. So, as you see, just with the little bit of deliberate attention to your dress socks you can dramatically increase their longevity and keep them looking new throughout their entire lifetime. Properly laundering your dress socks, the proper way is not difficult, it just requires a little bit of extra time and attention to detail.

Here at Kirby Allison Hanger Project we're proud to have one of the most extensive collections of luxury dress socks available anywhere in the world. Our Sovereign Grade socks are knit to the highest specifications in Rome by one of Italy's oldest sock knitters. These classic dress socks are essential additions to any well-appointed wardrobe and I promise they'll totally transform the way that you think about fine socks. A fine pair of shoes deserves if not demands. Find socks and of course please visit Kirby Allison's Hanger Project where we have the largest most comprehensive collection of luxury garment care and shoe care accessories in the world as well as our sovereign great luxury dress socks and our Laundress Detergents that I talked about in this video. And while you're there subscribe to our newsletter to receive notification of new product launches and promotions as well as a weekly digest of all the videos we publish here on our YouTube channel. If you liked this video give us a thumbs up or better yet subscribe to our newsletter and turn on notifications by clicking the bell so that you receive alerts whenever we release new videos. I'm Kirby Allison and thanks for joining me and my home.