Wednesday 29 June 2011 7:56 pm | Updated: Friday 31 May 2019 9:04 am

For summer: the Italian alternative

ANYONE who found themselves wilting in the heat earlier this week will understand the sense behind owning suits of different weights. There are plenty of fine, lightweight English cloths, but if you’re after a summer suit with real panache consider going Italian.

Or more specifically, Neapolitan – the Milanese tailoring tradition in northern Italy is closer to the English one. Down south, suits are designed to make one look as stylish as Marcello Mastroianni in a Fellini film, however sweltering the weather gets.

“Italian fabric like Loro Piana is very light, and very good for an Italian summer,” says Luca Rubinacci, 27-year-old scion of a Neapolitan tailoring dynasty – the Rubinacci shop on Dover Street in Mayfair must rank as one of London’s most beautiful tailor’s. He’s something of a style icon himself thanks to regular appearances in the popular Sartorialist fashion blog. “It’s a much lighter, softer suit to wear – like wearing a jacket that feels as soft as a jumper.”

Not only is the fabric different, but the structure as well – there’s much less of it. The inner canvas of a Neopolitan suit is feather-light, while there’s very little padding in the shoulder and often no sleeve lining.

NOT JUST FOR BUSINESS
Where the English suit is really a conversion of military attire for corporate life, the Italian suit reflects a culture where aesthetic sophistication is a way of life. This, after all, is the culture that gave us the man-bag so that they didn’t need to put anything in their pockets that would spoil the line of the suit.

“In Italy the suit was always not just for business but a real dress-code for everyday life, whereas in London it was more of a business thing,” says Rubinacci, who nevertheless notes how the appeal of Neapolitan tailoring is as broad now as that of English tailoring. “Before, our customer was only Neapolitan but now he’s from all over the world, and our average customer is now 30 years old.”

Be warned however – if you’re buying a lightweight, Italian-style suit, don’t expect to get as much wear out of it as one made closer to home. Paul Read of Square Mile Italian tailors Max Hence, has a useful analogy.

“An English suit is like a Land Rover – dependable, won’t let you down, hard wearing,” he says. “An Italian suit is a Ferrari – it turns heads and looks beautiful. But if you drive a Ferrari like a Land Rover, you’ll ruin it.”

Read says the Armani look of the ‘80s and ‘90s still gives people the idea that Italian suiting is boxy and baggy, when the opposite is true – the traditional cut is pretty slimline, worn, as Rubinacci says, “like a second skin”.

But of course, anything is possible in the bespoke world, and if you want the lightweight Italian feel with a bit more structure, you’ve only to ask. At least then you’ve more chance of shrugging off any passing heatwaves, while looking quite the continental aesthete.