Navy blue is a wonderful color and perhaps one of my favorites. Ever since I was a child, navy has represented elegance: academies, the military, and the color of my winter coat.
Growing up, navy played a part in my school uniforms and always represented classic attire right up until the late ’70s and ’80s when it became the color of conservatism and therefore a fashion faux pas. This shift made way for navy’s rebellious cousins, black and grey, which ruled the punk and new wave movements as the go-to foundation colors of fashionistas all the way through to the mid-nineties.
Navy eventually re-emerged, thankfully, and today is a wardrobe classic worn year-round as an elegant base for many wardrobes, including my own. It is easy to wear, being dark and very flattering in most silhouettes. It looks great on all skin tones and works well with other colors and palettes, making it ever popular for buyers and clients alike across all markets. All of this considered, I wanted to give some tips on how to wear navy blue in the midst of summer. Wearing navy after spring can sometimes feel forced, but I love to see it combined with summer palettes in summer-weight fabrics, with references to nautical and resort lifestyles.
Navy and white, or cream, is a wonderful optic with endless possibilities, especially in custom-made options. Color blocking—a navy shirt or polo with a chalk or white pant, for example—is a really simple and effective combination. The inverse is also impactful, with white on top and navy as the lower color of the silhouette in pants and shorts. Add a stripe into the mix, such as our Canclini Navy and White Stripe, that looks stunning with either navy or white pants, especially if you add a navy sneaker with a white sole for a literal “footnote” of navy to the look.
The interplay of navy and ivory can also be created by choosing options such as contrast trim, which we offer as tipping on the edge of the collar and front placket of polos, or as the whole collar and placket, which we introduced earlier this year. You can continue to play with the optics with thread color, button choices, and even contrast monogramming if you wish. This extends to full chest embroideries that give another level of expression to nautical taste.
Navy also works beautifully with color, and you will find this best expressed in shirting patterns where it continues to anchor prints and designs, making it easy to combine with other pieces of an outfit. This navy note is found in most of our shirting patterns from Somelos, Soktas and Albini. We include navy in a lot of the print shirts we are selling of late, to make them easy to wear back to navy pants and tailoring for endless possibilities in a man’s wardrobe.
Navy can also be worn with bright colors, which is a unique strength of this tone of deep blue, as black can look quite harsh at times when combined with pinks, turquoises and greens. Navy tends to be softer and thus easier to combine with summer brights. This combination works particularly well for the golf course and beyond, but I also like to see navy in a casual short for an instant balance of elegant and relaxed—the essence of summer attire. Combine a navy short with a linen shirt in any tone or pattern, and you have an outfit that can take you from the beach to a restaurant table whilst looking appropriate at both destinations.
Lastly, navy worn with other tones of blue is perhaps the most fashion-forward way to wear navy. The straightforward approach is to think of denim in any of our washes worn with a navy blue polo, and you can already see this play of tonality. This tonal effect also shows up in many of our suiting choices, giving our Client the possibility of combining any tone of blue shirt or pant he wants and adding to the endless ways he can wear navy with any shade of blue.
Embrace navy blue, even at the height of summer, and don’t relegate it just to classic suiting and winter coats. Wear it on sunny days, too, and enjoy how versatile and easy it can be to wear in so many ways.
