All three felt remarkably like regular shirts, with none of the waxy stiffness of traditional outdoor apparel or the uncanny sheen of performance fabrics. I went to work evaluating the shirts’ fit, feel, and stain-repellent fabric. I settled on three well-reviewed brands that make women’s shirts-Ably, Numi, and Mother Oxford-and chose a popular style from each. But a few embarrassingly well-targeted ads on my Instagram feed were enough to spark inspiration. Puzzlingly, many companies seem to believe that men are the primary audience for shirts that shrug off life’s little accidents (they obviously haven’t met me). I focused my research on brands that have made stain resistance their raison d’être. If you spill a cabernet or iced coffee on a treated fabric, the liquid immediately beads up and rolls off like drops of water on a windshield-or so manufacturers promise. The fabric in most stain-repellent shirts, on the other hand, has been coated with slippery and ultra-durable chemical compounds called PFAS (perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances), which are also in everything from nonstick pans to food wrappers (read more about PFAS below). When you spill water (or red wine) onto your clothing, it gets wet and saturated, which allows physical and chemical reactions to take place that result in stains. Ordinary cotton, silk, and linen shirts get stained because those fabrics absorb liquids. I was skeptical.) I also assessed each shirt’s style and the feel of its fabric: After all, spill resistance is moot if the shirt isn’t something I’d actually wear. ( Mother Oxford’s site shows a shirt theatrically doused in ketchup then rinsed clean under the shower. I wasn’t looking for perfection-none of the shirts promise to be completely stainproof-but I did want to see if they measured up to their marketing claims.
To investigate, I tested three purportedly stain-repellent shirts from brands that specialize in making easier-to-maintain apparel. What happens if you pour a glass of red wine down one of these shirts? We found out.
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