It was summer in 2018 and I was drenched in sweat. Not the sort of sweat you portray charmingly in English Gentleman films where there’s barely a bead of perspiration atop your waxed, handlebar moustache but actual, honest-to-god hot, dark patches under your arms sweat that has you clinging pathetically to your jacket even though the sun is beating down mercilessly and it’s 28 degrees out. In Richmond.
At a garden party. You know it’s bad when your single malt goes warm sitting outside. Anyway, I was sweating because I had foolishly chosen to wear my favourite lightweight Oxford cloth button down shirt.
This was the very same OCBD I wore all year round regardless of weather and generally considered my go-to menswear choice. You’ll forgive me then when London was hit by one of those glorious, full-blown heatwaves and I decided not only to not change my shirt but wear it with a trousers tucked into socks combo.
Live and learn.
“You look like you’re dying,” said my friend Charlie breezily as he sat on the lush green grass of the garden, his linen loafers effortlessly sandals in the 85% humidity. He was wearing a linen shirt that fluffed off his body like a ghost wrapped up in cheesecloth. I glared murderously at him.
“It’s my favourite shirt,” I replied, wiping my brow with the sleeve as another trickle of sweat formed on my spine. “Besides, it’s England. It’ll rain in five minutes.” It didn’t rain.
It stayed gloriously sunny for three weeks. I emerged from this experience defeated, banished my poor Oxford cloth shirts to the depths of my drawer and began an all-consuming research project that would change my relationship with summer shirts forever. I’d been writing about menswear for almost ten years at this point and had somehow neglected to work out my strategy for British summer dressing.
Honestly, how does that even happen? You see, British men aren’t exactly known for our grasp of seasonal dressing. Partly because we don’t really believe in it.
Growing up in a country that conditions you to expect the best of weather only to rip it away at the last minute means we’re always anxious that any warm day is just a trick, lulling us into a false sense of security before September rolls around and dumps three feet of snow on us all over again. So we have our uniforms that we can wear year-round. The OCBD, aforementioned linen shirt and chinos-type trousers; basics that work no matter the weather and look like they do so by design.
Except when it doesn’t. Except those blissful days when British summertime reaches its apex and all that careful sartorial neutrality you’ve worked so hard to maintain goes out of the window, and you suddenly realise that not only do you look stupid, you feel stupid. When you’re sticking to the carpet on the Central Line and cursing yourself for not investing in one of those newfangled personal fans on Kickstarter last year.
When you’re attending an outdoor wedding and can actually see your own sweat stains forming on your beige linen shirt, running down your sides like you’ve spent the morning rowing violently on the Serpentine. That’s when you know you need a proper British summer shirt strategy, and you need it now. Before we go any further, let’s define terms.
When I talk about the British summer shirt, I’m obviously not talking about Mediterranean or Caribbean or even Southern Californian summer shirts. The demands on a British summertime shirt are different – peculiar, even – to those found elsewhere. Firstly it has to be breathable, obviously.
But it also somehow needs to stand up to those days where London decides to turn itself into a disappointing lukewarm sauna without completely embarrassing you when the rain inevitably comes again and temperatures plummet because someone somewhere has decided it’s still only May. This mission to improve my British summer wardrobe started badly. Very badly.
After the garden party debacle I bought swatches of every breathable fabric known to mankind. Cotton? Cheque.
Linen? Got loads of that. Even fledgling experiments in hemp.
I was sleeping inermicotton blends. I took my disaster-mongering hobby to brunch, the pub, various events. Taking meticulous notes on each one – where the sweat formed, how each shirt felt after a day wearing it out, whether Unknown Pleasures still looked good even when slightly damp around the collar.
I even bought one of those NHS Heart Healthy charts and rated each shirt out of ten for coolness. If my girlfriend at the time hadn’t thought I’d completely lost the plot she might have grown suspicious. As it was, she encouraged me.
The first and most obvious breathable fabric you’ll come across is linen. Every magazine runs its linen obsession story every spring; dozens of spreads showcasing linen-clad men against columns of bare bricks in Milan/Porto/Sicily/etc., soaking up that magical golden-hour sunshine as if it were their birthright. Linen truly is amazing at staying cool – its open weave allows air to pass through freely and it pulls moisture away from the skin brilliantly.
Plus it gets even cooler the more you wash it (although we strongly suggest you avoid using tumble dryers on linen shirts, as they can severely damage the fabric – learn from our mistake). There’s just one problem with linen. Crease city.
Linen wrinkles. A lot. In fact, it might be the most Creaseful fabric known to man.
It’s usually neatly folded in the shop so by the time you get it home wear it, even once, you look like a sleep artiste. The creases just keep on coming, too. Fold over five minutes and you suddenly resemble a charity shop bin bursting at the seams.
Admittedly, some cultures don’t mind this look – Italian and Southern European dudes can often be spotted wearing linen jackets and trousers so crumpled they look slept in (their euphemism, not ours). But us British guys have been trained from birth not to venture out in public unless our clothes could practically be ironed on. I once saw an entire家族of linen-suited men glower furiously at each other on the train to Wimbledon because they all looked increasingly creased and the man in the Charterhouse shoes was the crispiest of them all.
Ah yes, linen blends. My saviour. It was on a blisteringly hot day at Lords Cricket Ground a few years back when I discovered the joys of linen-cotton mixes.
White linen shirt? Cheque. Cotton pockets and back yoke panel?
Cheque. Holy grail found. My mind exploded.
Turns out if you pair linen with roughly 50% cotton you still get all the benefits of the former but with way less creasing. We particularly like linen-cotton blends from British mills – Italian linen can often be wafer thin and dressy, so sticking to domestically-produced fabrics will give you something that’ll work hard all summer. Speaking of which, one particular brand we loved (RIP) had a linen cotton shirt that was the exact ratio of both fabrics.
Enough linen to keep you cool on even the hottest day but enough cotton to prevent you from looking like you slept in your shirt…while hungover. Irish linen’s particularly well-suited to shirts for this exact reason – Irish linen tends to be thicker than Italian, which actually helps it crease less (in our experience, anyway). A few years ago we were gifted some linen from a mill down in Cork called Baird McNutt and the results are brilliant.
Trust us, once you go Irish linen, you never go back. If creases are your worst nightmare then consider linen with synthetic blends. Ok, so we’re not fans of synthetics most of the time.
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But throw a bit of elastane or whatever in there to summer shirts and we’ll forgive you. I even have a summer shirt in my rotation that’s 97% linen but with 3% something evil mixed in to make it ITCHY LINEN so wearable. The problem with pure linen shirts is that they often look too relaxed, like you slept in them.
Add some cotton/synthetic content and suddenly you’ve got a shirt that looks polished and put together without sacrificing any of that breathable magic. Trust us, and buy a linen shirt with some form of elastane in it this summer. Alright, let’s talk cotton silk blends now.
Ever had that dream about catching your favourite tailor in his workshop and being gifted his finest bespoke shirts for free but you can only wear them for two seasons before they lose their magic? Yeah, that’s sort of what it’s like owning a cotton silk blend shirt. Typically these fabrics will be 70-80% cotton with the balance being silk, which gives you a subtly sheeny shirt that feels noticeably cooler against the skin than 100% cotton.
They’re also less prone to showing sweat, a bonus if you’re a naturally sweaty guy like us. Downside? They require far more careful washing than your average shirt – silk doesn’t like being agitated too much and can only really handle lukewarm water.
This means either being exceptionally gentle when hand washing them or having them dry cleaned, which will eventually cost you more than the shirt itself. But honestly, when was the last time you bought a shirt that kept its looks after years and years of washing? Cotton silk blends are theBenchmarkshireaside of menswear.
Once you go bespoke, you never go back. Sort of. Speaking of obscure fabrics we learnt about from my old uni friend Marcus (remember him?
The guy who wore nothing but vintage polyester in college? Now wears exclusively vintage polyester for ethical reasons)…linter looms! No, not like the dust cat-like collects under your bed.
Cotton lint cotton. Which is the cotton fibre that remains attached to the linen thread after they’ve been separated. Apparently it’s incredibly soft and floats on your skin like you’ve been sprayed with fairy dust.
The slight snag is that it has an unnatural shine to it that feels distressingly similar to wearing a shirt from”That ’70s Show.” The quality we had from Jack’s particularly shines (see what we did there?) when it’s dyed a paler shade of blue so you don’t get that whole rainbow(INFO)/RUNACCIDENT wiping across your shirt every time you adjust your stance. Do with that information what you will, but do yourself a favour and buy a lint cotton shirt this summer. You won’t regret it.
Ah yes, seersucker. God bless America for bringing seersucker back into vogue but we Brits have been criminally slow to catch on. Mention seersucker to most British men and they’ll envision retiree cardigans worn by gum-chewing, straw-hat wearing mascots for Guitar Centre.
Which is a shame, because modern seersucker is on another level. If you’re wondering why seersucker works so well, it’s all down to that signature duck’s egg texture you see across the fabric. Seersucker is woven in such a way that the fabric puckers away from your body, creating a natural air gap between your skin and shirt.
It’s also moisture-wicking, rarely needs ironing and those goddamn crinkles disguise sweat marks like nobody’s business. In short, it’s probably the best fabric for British summers, period. Not convinced?
We weren’t either until we tried this plain white seersucker shirt during last year’s heatwave. Gone are the days of unsightly stripes ruining your summer wardrobe – this style from Huntsman is made entirely from textured white seersucker and it’s absolute gamechanger. You can basically wear it with a tomato sandwich and no one will blame you.
Ps. If you’re in the market for a linen suit and none of the above hacks work, we found a British brand making linen-wool blends that are about as breathable as you can get whilst still ticking the suiting boxes. Ok, so we lied about linen being the OG breathable fabric.
Clearly cotton is the OG and when it comes to cotton, there are few fabrics as amazing as Sea Island cotton. It’s grown on these teeny-tiny islands in the Pacific and the plants themselves only grow to about a metre tall, meaning the cotton fibres are super fine and soft. Want to look like a michelin pigeon?
Buy a Sea Island cotton shirt. It’s also one of the most environmentally sustainable ways to produce cotton, which is nice too. Admittedly, ours is from Merchant & Mills who are absolutely not exactly cheap so this is very much a treat fabric.
But did we mention it gets softer the more you wash it? Buy one for yourself this summer. You deserve it.
Tropical weight wool. Wool. In the summer.
Hear us out. Wool shirts have this reputation for being itchy, uncomfortable hot boxes but when woven in a super fine gauge they can actually be surprisingly breathable. They also have the huge advantage of being naturally antibacterial so they don’t smell nearly as bad as your standard cotton shirt when you’ve been sweating all day.
Our shirt is from Mash & Ready who swear by their wool shirts in the summer months and we can totally see why. They feel remarkably light and give off very little wool scent, even after a long wear. Will it keep you as cool as a linen shirt?
No. But if you’re after a smarter summer shirt that you can wear under a suit this summer, wool is the way to go. Trust.
If you’re looking for something a bit more casual than linen or cotton silk blends, chambray is worth looking into. It’s basically denim’s less fancy cousin; made in a similar way but lighter in weight and usually in that quintessential duck egg blue. We’re particularly partial to the Amato chambray shirt, which is basically a medium-weight chambray that looks great with jeans but not heavy or hot enough that you couldn’t wear it with chinos.
Team that with a pair of suede shoes and you’ve basically got yourself a uniform. And when it comes to British summer essentials, having a uniform is key. Ok, so let’s talk shirt fit.
Unlike thenormalleni-shirt, lightweight summer shirts benefit enormously from a slightly looser fit. It not only allows your skin to breathe more but many of these lighter fabrics are actually more comfortable when given a little extra room.
Try and look for a slightly looser cut than your usual shirts – you’ll be able to pack more into your wardrobe and trust us, you’ll thank us when it’s May and everyone else is dying in their M&S shirts but you’ve got a whole drawer full of breathable magic.
One final note on summer shirts. Colours and patterns. Light blue is, of course, your safest bet for a summer shirt but why not branch out?
Summer’s the perfect time for stripes, cheques, even barely-there patterns if you’re feeling adventurous. Pick something bright to reflect those rays away from your skin but not so bright that you stand out like a sore thumb. Light pinks, yellows, even greens can work well in the summer months, so don’t be afraid to get punchy with those colours.
And heck, even go bold with a button down if the summer feels safe enough for it. (Don’t take that last comment too seriously, kids.) So, there we have it. Our whistlestop tour through the wonderful world of British summer shirts. We’ve got summer shirts we love that are lightweight but not too dressy, breezy without being limp, and of course ethically made too.
Honestly, we’ve come such a long way from that sweaty nightmare in Richmond all those years ago. In fact, let’s just take a second to appreciate how far we’ve come…
