Gatsby’s pristine white suit – worn, as F Scott Fitzgerald described, with “silver shirt and gold colored tie” – did little to alleviate his slow unravelling, but at least he looked sharp doing so. The late, great, endlessly stylish British actor Peter O’Toole knew he’d made it when “I bought a white Rolls-Royce and drove down Sunset Boulevard, wearing dark specs and a white suit, waving like the Queen Mum”. One man’s crowning moment is another one’s Man from Del Monte, I suppose. More recently, bright young thespian things Jonathan Bailey and Regé-Jean Page have experimented with all-white ensembles.
There are some excellent examples of men who’ve mastered the white suit, surely one of the hardest-to-tame beasts across the fashion spectrum. Marcello Mastroianni, immaculate in Italian film noir dark glamour during the filming of La Dolce Vita. Jacques de Bascher, Parisian homme-about-town during the intoxicating 1970s and underrated menswear icon, disappearing into the darkness of Maxim’s in an immaculate white ensemble. There’s something wonderfully ceremonial about the pageantry of the white on parade at Henley Regatta, too.
At an event I attended in September in the Umbrian countryside to mark designer Brunello Cucinelli’s 70th birthday, the dress code dictated all white and neutrals, in keeping with Cucinelli’s brand of softly-softly style. A risky game, given the flowing nature of that delicious tignanello red in such close proximity to those acres of lily white silks and linens. But the effect was devastatingly stylish; of course, it helped that Cucinelli’s designs are some of the most rarefied clothes in existence. Because, let’s face it, not everyone has that Mastroianni presence, and the white suit is utterly perilous in terms of practicality.
Obviously, for anyone who isn’t an Italian film star in Rome in the 1960s, the thrum of daily life churns up myriad obstacles to wearing white, especially the full force of all-over white. Given the very specialness of its nature, a man’s only going to be wearing a white suit for some sort of event – a continental wedding, for example, or similar formal occasion. And with it, the threat of a spilled glass of rosé, a slick of mud, the sticky hands of an errant toddler; an assassin’s blade in the form of a melting Percy Pig. So the first trick with white is to pick your moments.
The second is to consider your fabrication, because cheap white can look just that, and glaringly Daz-fresh in its one-note colour. Fresh white trousers can look great, worn on holiday in the Mediterranean, but a synthetic material in a retina-scalding white on a suit can look a little bit novelty, like it’s arrived in plastic packaging ahead of your John Travolta tribute act for a 1970s-themed birthday party.
It sounds obvious, but natural materials like cotton and linen are far better, not least because if you’re wearing a white suit you’re probably somewhere warm, and a weave with texture or motif in it will also lend depth; white-on-white herringbone for example. Be careful with silk, no matter how alluring the idea of a James Bond-esque white silk dinner jacket might be, because it’ll be hell to clean should a smear of pasta pomodoro find its way on your sleeve.
Then there’s the nuance of the shade of white. The spectrum of whites on the Farrow & Ball website is hilarious in its lyrically-worded opaqueness; never mind your old Elephant’s Breath, there’s a whole world of Wevet whites and Clunch whites. Basically, something a little more cream or grey-coloured will be kinder to most skin tones; box-fresh white is great with a tan, but less so on pasty or pinkish British skin. Similarly, it’s worth taking a style note from Cucinelli in how he tempers the full impact of white with a subtle stripe or piping effect on his suits in chalky grey or coffee tones to break it up and moderate the overall effect.
Take a similar approach to what you pair with your white tailoring. Bold colours – a bright green shirt, for example – can look a little bit novelty, so steer towards subtlety. A shirt in soft sage, for example, or stick to neutrals. Pastels with white can look cheerful and fresh too, but it’s a pretty youthful look so be mindful of how ruddy of face or grey of hair you are. Not that it’s a young man’s game entirely; a sweep of grey hair looks rather patrician against a white blazer and grey shirt.
Try these...
Cadogan linen suit, £695, Oliver Brown
Herringbone blazer, £390, Hackett
Linen shirt, £52, Laredoute
Suede loafers, £99, Jones Bootmaker , Silk pocket square, £80, Eton Shirts
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