With temperatures soaring across the country, we tend to be thinking more about vacation time than time at work or the office. We tend to forget that there are many of us still working through the months of July and August, with a need for appropriate business attire that works for busy, on-the-go guys taking car trips, working in freezing offices, stepping out to grab a coffee or running to the ATM. We have all felt that blast of hot air when leaving the fresh coolness of an office building into the torrid heat of summer. It’s never pleasant, but I have a few tips to help guys keep their cool and look great for every business need.
With the casualization of work, it is easy if your office approves casual attire —particularly in tech industries where they don’t frown upon shorts and t-shirts as the standard summer uniform. My advice is more for someone who needs to maintain a more business-appropriate image. At the very least, these guys need a sportcoat at the ready for daily meetings and conducting business. Italy, as we know, has long been the home of men’s style, and the mills of Biella have ingeniously developed a range of summer fabrics that blend extra-fine wools in lighter weaves with linens and silks. These are some of the sophisticated warm-weather tailoring fabrics that we offer at J.Hilburn.
We offered some linen blend suiting from Trabaldo Togna this season, which became very popular early on for destination weddings and planned events over the summer. Currently, we still have available TT26, which is an Olive Tropical Glen Plaid with the subtlest of patterns, making it appear like a solid at a few feet distance. This tropical fabric is woven to be as light as possible using extra-fine wool blended with linen, with a touch of silk for added texture. This fabric works not only as a sportcoat but also as a great suit. By adding the half lining option, which lightens the sportscoat even further, you have a tropical weight suit that performs perfectly.
We also have an Adriatic Blue Tropical solid. In the same weave and blend, it’s an elegant mid-blue with a slight tinge of lavender, making it a great blue suit for summer that we have not offered before.
Any year-round wool that we offer can be made with the half lining option, which takes away a large portion of the lining in the back and partially in the front on the sides of a sportcoat. This option helps enormously with breathability and therefore works for hot summer days or simply for guys who always run hot.
For those guys who can wear a sportcoat with a casual pant or chino, which is what the market proverbially calls “business casual,” then we have multiple options still available with color, texture and subtle patterns, all in the school of Italian sophistication. Standouts from Vitale Barberis Canonico are the Pale Blue Twill, Olive Basketweave and the Mid-Blue Basketweave, which are made with a blend of linen, silk and cotton, the result of the expert knowledge of this historic mill.
We also have two Trabaldo Togna sportscoats with a decidedly vintage look that combine extra-fine wool with cotton and linen. These are the Olive Soft Check and the Coral Soft Check. Both have a natural coloration that works back to every shade of natural and khaki in our pants — perfect for those 5-pocket aficionados.
For those guys wanting to maintain their fashion game while still looking tailored enough for meetings, our 4-way stretch is now available in sportcoats. I recommend the deconstructed or soft construction with a half lining to optimize the best features of this knit-like fabric. Our 4-way stretch is designed for the kind of comfort that can take you from driving a hot car to a meeting with the boss without having to stop by the dry-cleaners to get freshened up.
For those guys wanting to plan ahead we also have amazing value with the introduction of our latest collection of year-round suiting: twenty new fabrics covering sportcoat and suiting needs for even the most traditional of guys.
