The wardrobe whisperer

Alex Bilmes

helps one reader keep his cool in a suit

QMy return to the office has coincided with summer and I’m really worried about being back in my suits, shirts and ties, when I have been in shorts at home for so long. My company is quite traditional, so there’s been little relaxation of dress codes, despite lockdown. Do you have any solutions for keeping smart but cool in the summer?

— Chris

Alex Bilmes Editor-in-chief of Esquire

At the risk of overindulging my inner textiles nerd, Chris, the trick to looking smart and staying cool in warmer weather has very little to do with styles, cuts or shapes of clothes, formal or otherwise – it’s all about what they are made from.

It is perfectly possible to dress smartly in the heat and feel (and look!) a number of degrees fresher than chaps in shapeless casuals, but only if your clothes are made from lightweight, breathable cloth.

Think back to the early rounds of the Euros and the images of the Italian football manager, Roberto Mancini, patrolling the touchline of the Stadio Olimpico in Rome in his elegant pale-grey blazer, crisp white shirt and subtly striped tie. (Mancini is dressed by Giorgio Armani, of course.)

His opposite number, Wales’s Robert Page, was suffocating in a black synthetic tracksuit. Just as leather loafers are far more comfortable on a hot day than sweaty trainers, so Mancini’s outfit is all the evidence anyone should need of the superiority of the formal suit over the tracksuit, even in the heat of an Italian summer.

That said, I have lost count of the number of times I have watched men in heavy wool suits dissolve into puddles of perspiration, while others, just as formally attired, but in lighter fabrics, dance about like butterflies on a cool breeze.

Typically, what you are lookfora ing for when you’re buying mal menswear for summer is mix of natural fabrics (wool, cotton) and synthetics – somerecythis thing like Cupro, which is cled and treated cotton.

My big acquisition for summer is a pale-green cotton/ linen suit with a Cupro lining from Brunello Cucinelli. For sulmidnightjacket, try evenings, I have a blue Giorgio Armani unlined, made from 75 per cent silk, 25 per cent polystuff amide (the same used in nylon).

So, my advice to you is check the label, the lining and feel the weight. Cos has a linen suit for £239, Boss does an excellent pale-grey linen one for £399 and Paul Smith does a tercotton/linen-blend rific grey suit for £425. And if you really want to go the full Mancini, there’s a particularly fetching double-breasted suit, in the palfor est blue, at Giorgio Armani £2,750. No sweat.

Linen shirt, £69, and silk/linen trousers, £124, both Jaeger (marksand spencer.com)