Wash warm, dry relaxed
Linen tolerates forty degrees and improves for it, softening over years of ordinary washing. Shake the piece out before hanging or lying it flat, and accept the creases as the fabric’s signature rather than its defeat.
Iron only the parts that will be seen, damp, at the linen setting. A completely smooth linen shirt is a garment that has stopped being linen in any meaningful sense.
Store it rolled
Fold linen along its existing creases or roll it, and store it somewhere dry. The fibre is strongest slightly humid and weakest bone-dry, which is why linen cupboards and linen climates historically coincided.
Mend small seam splits at once with a simple backstitch in matching thread. Linen outlives several rounds of repair, and each one is cheaper than the first purchase.
Published by the Miraseta journal.