Edit: Quickly searching, this appears to be the case? Specifically modern moisture sensing dryers that stop appropriately goes a long way to never having something shrink on you.
Similar improvements have been made to improve colorfastness. Mixing new reds and whites used to consistently produce pink. Not anymore.
I have some semi-recent pinkified cloths.
That said, washing everything on cold water and low temps in the dryer works pretty well at extending the life of cloths.
Pretty soon you find out Frankie wasn't even in the band; The Pet Shop Boys didn't sell dog food at all; Dexy has terrible lap times; the Elfmans weren't actually knighted; etc.
Same reason why any furniture you order online seems to always have all the tools necessary to assemble it. They never require power tools and always include screwdriver(s) and/or Allen wrenches. They need to design away every possible reason someone might just return it.
As a pale guy whose wife likes the beach, they have been very helpful.
EDIT: I'm sure they are nowhere near the only brand to use that particular mix of fibers (mostly a variety of polyester/Spandex mixes depending on the shirt), just the one whose shirts I own. And the "fishing" bit is about the designs - very heavy on the fishing/hunting designs.
Once we figured out the problem and stopped using all of the smart features it started working fine. Unfortunately the interface really wants you to use the fancy modes and requires an annoying amount of steps to manually set a drying run. Easily the worst dryer UX I've ever had. I doubt I'll buy another LG appliance, although there are probably plenty of other offenders these days.
You just have to figure with all that dryer lint after every single load that your items certainly aren't getting any bigger after giving off all those grams of fiber.
You can only imagine whether or not more or less fiber than that is being lost down the drain with your wash water each time.
My parents' modern dryer is awful, just like yours. The craziest part is that it starts a countdown timer when there's tens of minutes left, as though the designers new the sensor was awful and decided to add some extra drying time to cover it up.
I wear a lot of 100% cotton (including 100% linen) shirts that still look and fit almost like new, since I'm a stickler about laundering them this way. Towels, on the other hand, get maximum heat for both washing and drying, and you can really see the difference. I use a lot of 100% cotton washcloths from those Target multipacks, and recently bought a set identical to one I'd bought a year or two prior; the new one was larger, a little softer, and a much brighter color. The old one had shrunk to a pale, slightly scratchy ghost of its former self!
On exactly one occasion, I accidentally threw a 100% cotton shirt in the towel hamper and didn't catch it before starting the load. It's not a shirt so much as a crop top now :)
In any case, both cotton and linen get the cold-water treatment from me!
Just hang it without wrinkles and it will be perfect when it's dry. When air drying, I don't hang shirts by their shoulders or pants by the belt end, I fold them over the hanger (or drying rack bar) at their midpoints. Adjust a little to get out most wrinkles, and they are beautiful and unwrinkled when dry.
Note that I fully understand it for the anecdotal weight that it has. That is, basically none. Is fun for conversation, but isn't intended to prove anything.
At this point I thought you were going for an ahem heavy-handed joke.
Might have been our new hangers.
On that last, I almost forgot I had direct evidence. We visited a place that shrank some of our clothes that we had washed many times back home.
dryer settings,
local environment in the laundry room.
Probably in that order.
I'll never understand how modern designs work worse, despite access to better sensors.
The last thing I had shrink on me was a wool sweater, which was over twenty years ago.
I used the hair conditioner trick to stretch it (same as in this article), which sort of worked.
I am not using a dryer, only a washing machine.
Can UV do that?
Those sensors, across brands, are absolute garbage.