I spent six months in the United States Army - from February to August of 2001, I was a Private in the world’s greatest military. Yay me. They gave me a medical discharge, but that’s beside the point - I’m here to share a not-so-secret method that we lazy Privates had for pressing our clothes.
Because I was in training the entire six months of my Army ’’career, ’’ I was required to wear my Army uniforms at all times. That meant I wore the fatigues (Battle Dress Uniforms, a.k.a. BDUs) a lot. The problem was that they had to have a visible crease in the shoulders, arms, cuffs, and down the center of the trousers. If my uniforms didn’t always look as if they had just come back from the cleaner’s, I got in trouble. Yeah, those were the days.
Being lazy, I talked to some of my fellow trainees, as they had gotten tips from people who had done this sort of thing longer. My room-mate and I finally devised a solution for our BDU-starching problems that worked.
We would wash the BDUs (which were made of a thick cotton blend, by the way) on Friday nights, throw them in the dryer, and set up the ironing board in our room. Then we used this product from Woolite - it’s a thick, syrupy starch that comes in a large bottle. You’re supposed to either dilute it with water or, if you’re really into looking like you stuffed cardboard into your pants, spray it straight on.
We would turn the BDUs inside-out (to keep the flaking starch from messing up the clothing) and saturate the BDUs with the starch. They were dripping wet by the time we were done, let me tell you! We let them dry on hangers over-night, then pulled out the iron the next morning.
We’d iron the creases into the BDUs and hang them back up. The entire process took half of the weekend, but we didn’t have to touch the clothing Monday through Friday. It was, by far, much easier than ironing with ’’regular’’ spray starch every night!
Also, to help ’’preserve’’ our shammed clothing, we laid it on the extra bed in our room when we undressed for the night - this way it wasn’t crammed into our wall lockers.
So, if you really want a sharp crease that will last through the week, this method might help you. Also, if you’re extremely smart (like the U.S. Marine Corps that we got to train with), you’ll lay fishing line into the crease from the inside of the garment and use a cigarette lighter to melt it into place. However, it has to be perfectly straight, otherwise you’ll just look like a dork.
If you prefer a less stiff crease - one that will actually allow you to move - you can use Niagara spray starch. It doesn’t work very well if you’re in the military and have to look like a freak, but, it’s great for people who can do whatever they want with their clothing. The stuff is sort of watered-down compared to most starches, so the crease doesn’t last long. But - it still allows you to move in your clothes!
And you thought the Army didn’t teach ’’real-world’’ skills!