I am currently comparing T&A and my new H&K shirts because I want to make a strategic decision for my shirt strategy for autumn 2018. I found that if you look at shirts after they have dried, but before ironing them, you can see best how good (or not) a shirt is. Once a shirt is ironed and on a hanger, it always looks good.
In my old days, the Harvie & Hudson ones were stiff like cardboard, with little "micro wrinkles" especially on the collar area.
T&A is somewhat better, but still quite stiff.
The current H&K range is much softer, and the fabric seems to be thinner/finer.
It's true that any reasonably high quality shirt will look good ironed and hung up - the question then is, what does the pre-ironed state indicate? Many of my shirts are pretty stiff after air-drying, but they're high-quality and comfortable shirts... So does stiffness necessarily mean lower quality? I'm not sure about that. Depends on your preferences for fabrics though, I suppose...
Yes maybe my description is not really accurate. But if you look at my "shirt journey" over the past 10 years, I have seen them all, and even the variations in one manufacturer (e.g. how H&H went from good to bad to mediocre).
I don't know if there is a truly objective way to describing it.
What about fabric softener? Where does that sit in these deliberations?
I dont know what that is
It's a liquid you add when you do laundry, it softens fabric. I've heard some people swear by it when washing OCBDs. I've used it on uniforms and also on Mercer OCBDs, but nothing else.
And what has that do to with the quality of shirt frabrics?