Just the thought of wearing a navy, three-piece suit in New
York’s 90-degree heat has the average gent breaking out into a sweat.
Which is why a host of luxury men’s wear labels are adopting new fabrics, according to a recent article from the Wall Street Journal. From silk to linen, tropical wool to fine cotton—and in one unique case, paper – these brands are in the game to develop the best lightweight fabrics for men’s suiting this season. So, let’s road-test them.
Berluti, owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, is the aforementioned paper suit culprit, making jackets and trousers from recycled paper mixed with silk or cotton. According to Berluti, the paper is ultra light and breathable, which is why the textile featured strongly at Italian brand’s Spring/Summer 2016 fashion week show in Paris last month. The light-ish fabric allows the structure to be maintained too, which is important for tailoring.
J.Crew has launched some lightweight Oxford shirts, said to around 25% lighter than the brand’s regular shirts. Increased airflow, due to the finer yarns and more open weave of the textile, are the reasons behind the breathability – which goes against the weightiness found in traditional Oxford shirts.
The WSJ article went on to highlight the issues corporate men have with linen or seersucker suits. The fabric’s tendency to crease and crinkle is not appropriate for the office, but normal wool feels too heavy in summer.
Enter tropical wool. The textile is lighter than the wool used in everyday suits for winter. According to Salvatore Giardina, a designer and teacher at the Fashion Institute of Technology, tropical wool generally weighs about 210 to 220 grams per linear meter compared with 260 to 275 grams for the fabric used in a non-tropical wool garment.
Outside of the concrete jungle, men of the south are looking to pincord, poplin and fresco - a woven where the yarn is twisted to make the garment more airy and wrinkle-resistant. Fresco has been described as a touch crunchy, however. But it too, breathes well.
According to Sid Mashburn, who owns specialty men’s shops bearing his name in Atlanta and Houston, men in the south are buying Italian-made shirting featuring cellulare, where the weave looks open like groups of cells and breathes better than Oxford shirting.
Wrapping up the summer buzz, the all-rounder award goes to the fashion houses working fabric hybrids into their tailoring. One such label is Miller’s Oath - a men’s wear label known for bespoke tweed suits. For the warmer months, the firm makes sport coats and suits made in blends of linen, silk and wool that resemble tweed.
“Your linen and your silk are fairly airy properties, giving you the lightness. And bringing in that wool makes it substantial enough to hold its shape,” Kirk Miller, the label’s co-founder, told WSJ.
Essentially, men want relaxed comfort and sophistication with their warm-weather tailoring. And light shirting to match. Very summer, very chic.