In Praise of Wrinkles

If you’ve been in hiding, for perfectly understandable reasons, here’s the news: the days of guys wearing gym gear as their default everyday uniform are over. The more I talk with younger men about town, the more I see a steady drift towards a mix of casual and tailored pieces entering the wardrobe to present a more sophisticated approach for contemporary dress.

This is something that’s been happening ever since the end of the Covid pandemic. We've all needed a bit of cheering up since then, and I'll spare you the well-known details. Clothiers who are stocking a more elevated sense of styling by mixing the casual wardrobe of lightweight cotton and linen knits with softly tailored jackets and easy-fitting trousers have grabbed the attention of guys who realize they can be stylish and comfortable at the same time.

"Nobody needs to sacrifice comfort for fashion. Fashion is more and more being seen as style’s distraction."

We’ve finally climbed out of the synthetic fabric gym clothes and everyone now seems to realize that something was missing:  clothes styled for practicality, but with a sense of style. But spring and summer clothing for far too many men still consist of cargo shorts, T-shirt, and some type of deck shoe. It’s easy, it’s comfortable, a perfect pickleball outfit, but it's a touch uninspired.

Many men simply haven't been shown that there's a middle path between the gym and the office, one that offers the same ease with considerably more style. And I'm not sure whether it's just a fear of standing out from the herd, a disinterest in clothing, or a certain frugality of imagination. I really don’t know what the answer is, except that I don’t think you should cheap yourself out of the game.

"And so I’m going to be bit presumptuous and offer a little fatherly advice for your consideration: linen. Linen fabric has been around forever, I mean almost literally."

Apart from animal skins, linen has probably been our oldest fabric, microscopic fibers of flax (of which linen is woven) have been discovered and radiocarbon dated as early as 36,000 years ago. Archeologists have unearthed a simple shirt of linen – this is the oldest garment of its kind on record so far – that dates to around 3,000 BC. Roman and Biblical writers mention the fabric, and in both Europe and the American colonies weaving linen for clothing became industries as early as the 18th Century. The flax plant was plentiful, the fabric long-wearing, and could be washed easily. 

When cotton became popular it took over many of linen’s uses such as underclothes, while linen maintained its popularity in Southern climes – Italy, the Southern USA, Spain – for suits, trousers, and jackets. At the turn into the 20th Century a visitor to southern climes would have encountered many men wearing linen suits heavily starched and pressed, which didn’t keep them from creasing, but that’s part of the fabric’s great charm and panache.

"Today, in an age of literally indestructible synthetic fibers, the sang froid of pure linen is a point of one-upmanship, and the insouciance that says you’re too cool to care."

And if you feel a white linen suit may be a bit too striking, have it in a pair of trousers and sports jacket. Or better, have the suit in tobacco brown, or pale olive green, or navy blue, each particularly dashing with a light blue shirt. My dear friend Mariano Rubinacci was fond of wearing black linen suits in the evening and looking incredibly chic too, pairing it with a plain white shirt and slip-ons.

The only caution I would have is that the linen genre, if we may call it that, is not for the timid. Wearing a linen suit can’t be brought down to a science, it remains something of an art based on a certain confidence and individuality because the gentle creases and wrinkles and folds that accrue must be accepted as a mark of finesse, a sign of natural assurance and unconcern for the true gentleman about town, a true sign of the triumph of style over severity and regimentation.