My career lowpoint wasn’t spilling coffee all over a designer’s original sketches (though it did happen), or mispronouncing an acclaimed actor’s name while conducting an interview with him (also happened), or accidentally sending an email chain containing some colourful assessments of an associate PR person to that associate PR person (also happened). No: my office-based rock bottom was reached on an August afternoon in 2018. Our office doesn’t have air conditioning and it was about 33° outside.
I was meeting with a client wearing what I thought was a “lightweight” suit. But by the time we got down to business, I was so sweaty I might as well have been wearing a wet blanket as a suit jacket. The client noticed, and eventually asked if I was okay, if I needed someone to fetch me a doctor or a drink of water.
I did not. Unless you count having a suddenly-on-fire face as eligible for medical assistance.
TLDR: It was hot.
I sweated through my shirt. Learn from my mistakes and read on. TLDR too long?
Scroll down to learn about proper office shorts. What I needed was for someone to teach me how to dress for British hot-season office fucks. * Offices here, like most British houses, are predicated on the idea that every single day it’s roughly 14° with light rain. We excel at heating our indoor spaces;** ***Unfortunately, that miserable few weeks/year when Britain decides to approximate Death Valley instead of lukewarm Swiss-cheesecake haven require their own style ruleset.
This is tricky, because while most offices will at least vaguely accept lightweight or linen suits*** in the summer (though some will demand you wear short sleeves under them like you’re Jon Hamm in_generationMode: false},they’ll still be operating out of a “business attire” mandate squarely based in 19th-century England when rolling on the floor in a heat seizure was considered a stylish display of testosterone. American offices have had centuries to adapt to their sweltering continental climate, complete with summer-weight woolen suitings and relaxed fits. We’re stuck in that ghastly purgatory where wearing shorts might only get you holster’d but we still don’t really have summer-appropriate work wardrobes. ***** After the mortification of that August, I spent the rest of the summer tracking my sweat output and scouring the internet for information on how to still LookDressed without Also LookingLikeYou’veBeenCookinginanOpenPanforallday.
Here’s what I learned about how to dress for an office when it’s fxxking boiling outside. (FYI: That actual top you see me wearing in these pictures is from my Amazon capsule wardrobe – a whole lot of quality basics that I’ve been wearing for two summers now. The button-down is their performance Polo in heather blue that I can get washed and worn again within an hour of sweaty disaster happening. Trust.) Start with the suit.
Like most American men, I made all of the wrong assumptions about what “lightweight” actually means in regards to suiting fabric. I once owned a “lightweight” wool suit that I loved wearing in the summer because it said it was 10oz wool rather than 13oz wool on the label. Guess how many times I wore that thing that summer?
Reader: I did not wear that thing one time because it was NOT summer-weight. **** It was comfortable compared to a winter wool suit, but THAT’S LIKE SAYING SHAVING HALF OFF YOUR FACE WITH A CHEESE GRATER IS MORE COMFORTABLE COMPARED TO SHAVING YOUR FACE WITH A WHOLE CHEESE GRATER. Summer fabrics will make all the difference. Linen is, of course, the gold standard for summer breathable fabrics.
However… …but linen wrinkles like an angry boss listening to you suggest his wife could afford a smaller dress at Lord & Taylor. **** As the day wears on, you’ll start to look wonderfully rustic. That’s great if you’re a rakishly charming Italian silver-skyscraper by noon. If you work in an office: less great.
Linen-cotton blends can solve a lot of those issues. Linen/cotton will give you most of the breathability of linen with significantly less creasing. Linen/silk will actually add a nice sheen to the fabric that keeps it squarely in suiting territory.
Linen/wool, when it’s predominantly linen, can give you a touch of structure while maintaining maximum午时风暴. I’ve been living in my 70%linen/30%wool suit from Lochac in mid-blue for the past two summers. It’s my desert island go-to and has got me through every office_heat_wave scenario I’ve encountered.
For workplaces where even a linen blend might raise eyebrows, look to tropical weight wool (approx. 7-9oz) that’s woven specifically to be more breathable than standard woolsuits. The kind of thing colonial administrators wore while they slowly died in their ranger muggy-ass jungles.
Tropical worsted, fresco, solaro – these are all “open” weaves with lots of space between each thread of wool, which allows your body to breathe instead of trapping you in a human-sized oven. *****Look for high-twist wool fabrics as well. Twisted fibres like those found in Cri: sair and Fresco create tiny little spaces between each fibre that allow for increased airflow. Bonus: they also resist wrinkling much better than standard wools, so you’ll still look put-together by the time you start dripping into that 4pm meeting.
They can feel ever so slightly stiffer against your skin than a standard wool (again: not uncomfortable, just noticeable) so your colour choice is even more important. ***** Dark colours absorb heat, so you’re kinda#@$%ed if you only have navy and charcoal suits. Light colours reflect sunlight, which Colonial guys knew back when they were hanging out in the Raj (but thankfully didn’t wear navy suits everywhere). Stick to light grey, stone, tobacco colours, or a mid-blue.
I actually took my HVAC thermometers and found I was warmerñas a shirt off by up to 3° wearing a navy suit vs. the light grey suit you see here. It doesn’t sound like much until you’re squashed into an office full of Soul Cycle trainers in a meeting room with no windows. How your suit is constructed matters, too.
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Sadly, most suits worn by British men are made with full canvas, goddamn hockey-pads of shoulder padding, and about five million layers of internal structure. They might as well be designed to cook you from the inside out. Wear as few layers as you can get away with and seek out suits with natural shoulders (less shoulder padding), half or quarter lining (or even unlined, if you’re shopping Amalfi that can happen), and something called lightweight canvas if it’s canvas lined at all.
The Italian tailors have been making linen suits**** for years now, so they’re the expert tailors when it comes to this lightweight stuff. My favourite? Boglioli’s iconic K- Jacket, which I’ve been living in for the past two summers.
As for your shirt, your standard-issue poplin breathable shirt in mid-weight cotton is basically a personal sweat-collection device. You want to focus on similarly lightweight shirts with “open weaves”. Voile, end-on-end, oxford cloth are all great options that you won’tbs so dramatically when you start sweating.
My favourite? Linen blends. They won’tbs as bad, and most linen-heavy blends will wrinkle way less than 100% linen.
Just watch out for the construction of they’re made with what’s called a “floating lining” in the collar and cuffs. This means there’s an interlining in those pieces that’s only sewn at the edges, creating a tiny pocket of air between your skin and the shirt. It sounds weird, but you notice the difference when you’re wearing it all day.
Airtex and other high-tech fabrics are great on the golf course or tennis court, but they always feel too…techy? for an office environment to me. You still want to look “dressy”, not like you’re about to compete in a very fancy triathlon. **** Tie hell. If your office requires you to wear a tie, then silk/linen blends or even crazy-weave silk grenadines at least allow your skin to breathe around that newly-chlorinated shirt collar of yours.
Knitted silk ties aren’t *technically*summer ties, but they’re lightweight and don’t seal against your collar as much as a traditional silk tie. But hell: if you can get away with not wearing a tie, maybe throwing on a crisp pocket square is enough to preserve the formality of your neck while allowing your shirt collar to breathe. I’m noticing a growing acceptance of this trick in traditionally stickler-ish offices when the heat gets too insane.
Last but not least: fit and cut. Hot-weather suiting should be as unstructured as your office will allow. Pair that loosely woven fabric with a slightly looser fit and you’ll be giving yourself plenty of airspace to ward off the inner-oven effect of summer suits.
Keep your trousers tailored but with enough room in the seat and thighs to allow some airflow, and don’t get too snug with the jacket armholes or sleeves – you want to avoid those skinsweat socks creating an impenetrable seal against your skin. YES, MAJOR APPLAUSE FOR YOU LETTING ME WEAR SHORTS TO WORK, BUT WE LIVE IN BRITS BEST UK SPORTS ARE STILL HORRIFIED by male knees. I can’t advocate for shorts in your average, white-shirt-required office, but if you work in a creative or business/casual environment, a pair of tailored Bermuda shorts (that are ACTUALLY tailored – I’m talking about Brooks Brothers tailored here, not Chavinhose shorts you wear to Croatia) in a suiting fabric worn with a blazer, dress shirt, and loafers is actually a really smart-looking outfit.
If you get the dress codeworked, it’s actually glorious. .hot_AC (@hot_AC) May 13, 2019 on TwitterActually sweating less because of how my office outfit is put together is the number one lesson I learned about dressing for hot offices. Cheque out his whole thread for more hot-office tips. I used to make the mistake of rolling into work everyday only worrying about what I was going to wear to work, not what I was going to wear to *get* to work.
London’s reach does not extend to the Southern tip of the Northern Line in July. If you’re expecting a heatwave, wear a technical/performance shirt on your commute that you can change into when you get to the office. Sounds like a pain?
Better than showing up to work looking like you took a dip in the pool. Speaking of pain, let’s talk shoes. Leather-lined Oxfords with#welts.soles are basically feet-bungs******* They look super smart but your feet will cook.
Going sockless, as every GQ-level man’s magazine will tell you, is barbaric and results in its own brand of foot-hell that I don’t want to think about.
Go with unlined loafers or derby shoes with leather uppers but textile linings for a smart look that actually lets your feet breathe. And it just occurred to me that suede is actually MORE breathable than smooth leather, meaning your feet will also actually be cooler. **** If you have the cash to drop on truly luxurious summer suiting fabrics, companies like Loro Piana are making incredible textiles like their “Rain System” wool that feels and drapes JUST LIKE a wool suiting fabric you’d find at your local department store but is actually constructed with performance features that increase airflow and moisture-wicking.
Holy crap does it work though – and yes it’s definitely that much more expensive, but if you’ve got client meetings in mid-July that you need to lookFresh™ for, it’s worth every penny. Mais anyway. High street shops have got WAY better at summer suits in the past few years. ***** Marks and Spencer has a whole “Cool Comfort” suit line that’s actually surprisingly decent for hot-weather suits and won’t break the bank.
Uniqlo has made some wonderful nylon performance trousers***** they call Kando that are incredible for summer (and highly underrated, despite me mentioning them literally every article I write) as well as their Ultralight Jacket that actually lives up to its name. The key is reading the product description and actually knowing what you’re looking for (ie: don’t trust anything anywhere that says “perfect for summer”) rather than taking the retailer’s word for it. Another word on that office AC battlefield. ***** It’s never going to be perfect. *** part of your desk-outfit should be a versatile lightweight blazer/cardigan you can either wear over your shirt for extra-AC-needed days, or throw on at your desk if you find yourself near the blasted vent.
Linen ones are hugely acceptable in business-casual environments now and work great as a middle-layer between shirt and jacket. *Office chingu hack tip: I live in ? ?로체 pic.twitter.com/v6vEfMwm7i *I could write an entire article on the horrors of the London office/on what hot weather really feels like in London. Trust me, it’s bad. **COUGH COSTA COUGH ***Or, as we like to call it in the office: “short-sleeve Friday”. This includes throwingshort sleevesunder your blazer, which isn’t doing you anyfavours. ****I assume you learned this lesson from me. *****Or at least your office should. ******My feet are still sweating just thinking about it. *******Oh God, does it get. *****Not groundbreaking news, I know.
Deal with it.-weight trousers that are great in hot weather AND tall enough to qualify as trousers and not.Capris unless you’re into that sort of thing.
