How can I stop my beautiful linen dress from wrinkling?

To answer your second q: More interesting than the two choice polls like the one posted a few q’s down (relating to noodles).

Ah, Niki, I have been falsely wooed so many times by the beauty of a linen dress on the hangar only to look like I slept in it when I wore it. Perhaps some Fluther genius has solved this problem, but I finally gave linen up and most sources agree that it just is the way it is. Here’s one.

Niki: either you choose the rumpled look or stand up while wearing it; and no sweating, please.

Isn’t the beauty of linen is that it wrinkles?

Part of my degree was in textiles, and sorry, the above answers are correct. The thicker it is, the more it holds and shows the wrinkles. That’s a characteristic of any natural fiber. One of the reasons that synthetics were developed was just that, permanent press.
The plus side is that they breathe better. Wrinkle free finishes have been developed (cotton), but I haven’t heard of any yet for linen.

One way to test in the store, is take a piece of the garment, squeeze it in your hand and release. If you see any kind of wrinkling that stays, it will be multiplied when you sit in it for a while.

Be grateful for the choice you have in fabric. When I was school, permanent press didn’t exist, nor blended fabrics. I had to wear a cotton blouse to school every day and my HS gym suit was purchased the year before the wrinkle free fabric came out. It was a monkey puzzle to iron. I still have it to remind me, I plan to donate it the school’s museum.

sorry niki: SOL! I’m a big fan of linen. It’s going for the comfortable look!

Actually, I just had a thought. They make travel size bottles of Downy Wrinkle Remover (or you could fill your own). When you freshen up (in the little girl’s room) you can freshen your dress as well. You would just need to stand for a while it dries. Might sound silly, but it would work at a wedding where you wanted to look nice and had a reason to stand.

I did see somewhere that you can also make your own out of diluted fabric softener, but I don’t have the formula of water to softener, and I haven’t tried it.

@Seesul; so we have a choice of seeing you in the mosquito-free suit or your gym bloomers? This is getting sartorially interesting.

I doubt most of the people here know what a gym suit is (or bloomers, for that matter). Nor the girls at my alma mater. I can’t believe anyone else would be crazy enough to have saved theirs, which is why I plan to donate it back to the school.

Fifteen years later, when my son was in the NICU, I looked down at my gown and knew I’d seen it somewhere. It was the same darn fabric and color (ucky yellow-gold) as my gym suit. Now I know what they did with all the leftover fabric. It was so hard to iron that when you got to the last part, another part had wrinkled. The most frustrating thing was that my best friend (Katie) was in the class behind me and had the permanent press model.

In case you are wondering, I saved the thing just because it was so hard to iron and I knew someday I could show my children how lucky they were to have perma-press. It’s the California version of walking 3 miles in the snow to school.

Can’t believe you wonderful women have turned this thread into something interesting. And solved my problem.

When I was at a women’s college in the late fifties, our gym suits were pale blue and extremely unattractive (I knew no one who ever ironed hers altho I had a friend who ironed her socks.) We wore them a lot during the week (with unwashed hair) since there were no men around except the teachers. Then on Friday there would be a mass and miraculous transformation, in prep for the week-end at a men’s school. Archaic, as I look back on it.

Niki, wrinkled linen looks beautiful, in my opinion.

Gym suits! Gack, I had forgotten. I think gc and seesul have a decade on me as mine was in the permanent press world, but that certainly did not improve it as an outfit. Whenever I hear talk of school uniforms, I think back and know they are not the answer to what ails our schools.

@Niki: sounds like some help from seesul with the anti-wrinkle spray. Have a great time.

Now if just the wrinkle spray would work on my face. Not necessarily a decade, Marina, they came in the year I was a Sophomore.

I am the crone here, remember.

@ niki – when i saw this question on the list, i actually did think it was interesting and that’s why i opened it (even though i had no clue about the answer). didn’t open the poll ones though.

Maybe women as a group are more interesting that what’s their names?

Then am I the Vice Crone? She may well be a decade younger than moi.

I second (third? fourth?) the opinion that the beauty of linen is in the wrinkles.

Linen, to me, is the most comfortable, laid-back and elegant of all fabrics. The bay rum of haute couture.

We all forgot to ask Niki what colour the beautiful dress is. So, nu?