What is Ring Around the Collar?

My son attends a school that requires a uniform.  Four days a week, he wears khaki pants, a logoed polo shirt, and dress shoes, and on Tuesdays, which is chapel day, he wears khaki pants, a white dress shirt, a navy blazer, dress shoes, and a necktie or bow tie.  Just last week, I went to start a load of white clothes and noticed a dirt ring around the collar of his dress shirt.  How is it that he’s old enough for ring around the collar?

Before we get to how to both prevent and treat it, let’s first define ring around the collar.  Ring around the collar is a combination of dirt, sweat, dead skin cells, and body oils that build up around the collar area of a dress shirt causing it to turn a yellowish, brownish color.

How to Reduce the Chances of Ring Around the Collar

• Pretreat and gently hand scrub the collar area before you even begin to see signs of ring around the collar.  Shores has made it a practice to treat the collars of all the dress shirts that enter our stores.  It’s time consuming but worth the effort.
• Wash or professionally launder your dress shirt as soon as possible after wearing.  The longer a stain sits, the more difficult it becomes to remove.
• Avoid wearing your dress shirt more than once.  Doing so will push the first layer of soil deeper into the fabric during the second wearing.
• Before putting on your dress shirt, wash your neck with soap and warm water then allow it to completely dry; this will reduce your shirt’s exposure to body oils.  Make sure you do this after applying lotion or hair products to avoid these products from being soaked up by your shirt.
• Rotate your dress shirts regularly to reduce the amount of wear they receive.

Not only does having your dress shirts professionally laundered save you time, it also produces a superior product with dress shirts looking brightly white and starched to your preference.  If your dress shirts need special attention, drop them off at any Shores location.  Bringing clothing back to life is our specialty.