The Care That Gets Cut Away

The strangest thing about a care label is that the more it wants to look after a garment, the more likely it is to be disliked first by the person wearing it. What it preserves is not decoration, nor the tone of a brand, but careful little methods: cold water, low heat, no bleach. Yet it happens to be sewn into the most intimate place. Before care has time to happen, it first becomes a small itch at the back of the neck or the side of the waist.

So when a new piece of clothing comes home, the first thing many people do is not wear it, but look for scissors. The hangtag is still swaying at the cuff, the thin plastic loop has not yet been removed, and fingers have already slipped into the seam at the back of the neck, pinching a stiff little piece of white cloth. In calm small print, it reminds you: wash cold, do not bleach, tumble dry low, iron inside out. It does not declare taste. It merely writes down a garment’s temper for it, in the place where a garment cannot speak.

A garment will not take a step back before hot water, will not frown when bleach comes near, and will not remind anyone that the iron is too hot. It can only entrust these tempers to a small piece of cloth, waiting for some hurried hand about to toss it into the washing machine to look down and read. But instructions need to be seen, while clothing needs to be forgotten on the body. When good clothing rests close to the body, it is best as if it does not exist; the care label, with its stitches and hard edges, reminds you that it is there too.

This is its embarrassment: it is designed to outlast human tolerance. A care label is supposed to remain legible throughout the life of the garment. A piece of clothing can grow old, its cuffs whitening, its fabric loosening, but those few lines of small text must still speak clearly. The system hopes it will accompany the garment through its whole life; the body often drives it out on the first day.

Later, some clothes began printing the instructions directly inside the collar, in a faint layer of gray text. That is like admitting that what people reject may not be the rules, but the way the rules take the shape of a foreign object pressed against flesh. Yet gray text, too, is slowly rubbed pale by sweat, friction, and washing. It understands the skin of the present moment better, but may not understand the long afterward of a garment any better. Many care labels really are rough: the print is small, the edges hard, and after a few washes they curl into a narrow tongue that scrapes at the waist with every step. What gets cut away is sometimes not care itself, but the tail left behind after care has been carried out too clumsily.

But softness alone does not necessarily count as care. The care label appears dull-witted because it is facing more than just the person wearing the garment right now. It must also face the hands in a coin laundry with no time to think carefully, the stranger who inherits old clothes after a move, a dryer with a different temperament. It has no way of knowing who will look after this garment, so it can only write its words a little more firmly, a little more durably. Public goodwill is sometimes like this: not considerate enough when pressed close to the body, yet once gone, leaving people with one less layer of evidence.

The cut that removes a care label is very light. The scissors slide in against the stitches, afraid of cutting the garment, and can only bite slowly through the white cloth. The little piece of fabric falls away. The garment becomes a little softer, and also a little more silent. The rules have not disappeared; they have merely moved from the reverse side of the garment into human memory. You may remember that this piece cannot be tumble dried; perhaps after a few washes you will forget. When it shrinks, takes on color, or is scorched into shiny marks, responsibility becomes blurry: was the garment poor, or is the reminder that was cut away no longer there?

A garment finally rests quietly against the body. The stitches on the reverse side remain; beside them, a piece of white cloth is missing. In the trash can, that curled-edge care label still says “low heat,” lying among paper scraps and loose threads, only a few steps away from the garment, yet already unable to remind it of anything.