Be Cool

Dress stylishly or beat the heat? Here’s how to do both.

- Jake Woolf

SUMMER PULLS A man to the extremes of the sartorial spectrum in short order: a tuxedo for a black-tie wedding one day, a pair of swim trunks and some espadrilles the next. But at least those situations come with an easy-to-follow blueprint. It’s the open-ended occasions between the two—vacation dinner outings, backyard get-togethers, a heatwave commute—that present the greatest challenges to warm-weather dressing. The trick is finding items that deliver more structure and polish than tees and shorts but don’t cause you to keel over from heatstroke.

Fortunately, today’s menswear market, after years of increasing informality (spurred first by athleisure, then by the pandemic), is now flush with refined, just-shy-of-tailored options to address the predicament. This isn’t a case of some technological breakthrough in air-conditioned polyester suiting but rather a return to the forms, fibres and silhouettes men wore in sweltering heat during the most stylish parts of the 20th century. Think lightweight knit polos, open-weave shirts and pleated, free-flowing trousers reminiscent of those worn by Fred Astaire in The Band Wagon—or from 1980s Ralph Lauren ads.