Update on My Washed Denim Proper Cloth Shirt, or: How to Bleach A Denim Shirt

At the end of February, I posted that I was finally going to buy a Proper Cloth washed denim shirt. I’d been eyeing them for at least a year but had never been able to pull the trigger. But in December, the kind people at Proper Cloth spiffed me $200 of store credit as a holiday thank-you for my support of the brand, and so I used that credit to buy the shirt (read my policy on free stuff as a blogger here. TL;DR: I don’t accept free stuff in exchange for positive coverage).

The shirt arrived and I immediately threw it on. Two things stuck out to me right away. First, the collar felt off somehow (more on that later), and second the color was way darker than I anticipated.

I have a mid-wash Eidos chambray shirt that I absolutely love, and I bought this light wash to complement it. I held the two together and found this “light wash” denim was several shades darker than the Eidos. Well that sucks… Kind of defeats the purpose. So I washed it on hot to see whether it might lighten up a bit.

It did not.

So I started asking around on the Internet. Folks on the Styleforum affiliate thread for Proper Cloth said theirs had lightened over the course of a year or so to about the same color as my Eidos. A year?! Not gonna wait that long.

So I googled “fading denim with bleach,” and found this helpful Clorox guide.

Finally this week I was able to take the time to try this process on my shirt. I succeeded, and here’s the after pic:

I was a little bit afraid of the process, so I did it in three steps, progressively using more bleach. If I did it again, I’d just go straight for the bleach ratio I used in the third and final step. At first, I did only 1/3 cup bleach to 4 gallons of water (in my kitchen sink, which I cleaned thoroughly beforehand). No noticeable change. So then I did 1-1/3 cup bleach total with 4 gallons water (in other words, 1/3 cup per gallon). I submerged the shirt completely for 6 minutes, constantly agitating and ensuring none of the shirt popped above the water line for very long. That lightened it noticeably, but not enough.

So the third try was the one I found success. I used 2/3 cup bleach per gallon of water, and submerged the shirt for only 3 minutes, agitating constantly. I rinsed it fairly well in the shower by hand, then transferred it (without dripping!) to our washing machine. I did a rinse and spin cycle. Then a heavy duty load with Tide detergent, on hot water. I did another two rinse and spin cycles after that before taking it out. I then threw mine in the dryer on high heat because the shirt collar is a touch big on me (didn’t follow my own advice; on these chambrays, do not expect them to shrink more. Follow my advice here for best results).

Out it came, and it was a beautiful, much lighter color than it was before. It’s slightly lighter than my Eidos, so I may choose to lighten it a bit more. But I’m going to wear it a few times to see how it feels.

After all, my primary goal was to basically recreate this perfect Eidos shirt. And I feel this color appears pretty close.

Proper Cloth made changes to my favorite collar style—the Soft Roma Cutaway—which I am very unhappy with. I’ll write a separate post on that soon so stay tuned.