9 Ways to Outdress the Groom at Every Type of Summer Wedding
The tailoring is soft but with enough structure in the shoulder to still feel like a suit and not a shirt. The fabric is a breezy and luxurious Italian linen and comes in a deep, almost black, shade of charcoal brown—a great colorway that can translate beyond weddings and into the office. We love a creamy white suit for summer, but you won’t get much wear out of ‘em as you might think. And if you’re going to spend the dough on a nice suit—a really nice suit—you may as well get one that has range.
Best Summer Wedding Suit You Can Wear Year-Round: Banana Republic Italian Rustico Suit
Materials: 100% wool from Vitale Barberis Canonico | Fit: Tailored slim
Yes! You can wear wool in the summer. There are plenty of tropical wool suits on the market, but for the price, forget the rest and peel over to Banana Republic. The grown-up sibling to The Gap has it figured out with lightweight, loose-weave Italian tropical wool from the renowned Vitale Barbaris Canonico mill. It has as much texture and character as a heavy tweed, but at a featherlight weight and AC-like breathability. As for fit, it’s cut with a classic, slightly trim silhouette, wide-ish notch lapels, and natural shoulders.
The best part? You won’t have to worry about this suit getting wrinkled like with linen or cotton. And what’s more is you don’t have to wear this in the summer. Tropical wool is great for the warmer months, sure, but you can easily rock it in spring and even the fall. When things start to get nippy, make sure you switch your suits over to the heavier stuff.
Best Summer Wedding Suit for Destination Shindigs: Stòffa Washed Linen Suit
Materials: 100% linen | Fit: Relaxed
Someday soon, your richest friend will humbly request your presence in the South of France, and you will need a suit—or, at least, a suit-esque set—to match the vibe of the occasion. Needless to say, the suit in question shouldn’t be your trusty 9-to-5 standby: it should be breezy, casual, and unlike any other two-piece in your rotation.
In other words, it should feel a lot like Stòffa’s pajamas-adjacent washed linen set, which will make you look like you just jumped off the PJ, not out of bed. It’s a little boxy and very drapey, thanks to a drawstring waist and a sleazy camp collar that leaves little to the imagination, but that’s fine (it’s France, after all). What were you going to do—rock the same blue suit you wear to work? We thought so.
More Summer Wedding Suits We Love
If the wedding you’re attending is projected to be a real scorcher and the dress code is casual enough, you might get to show off a little leg. It’s fairly uncommon to see a suit jacket paired with tailored shorts, and even less common to see one that looks as good as J.Crew’s does.
It’s got an indulgently roomy silhouette that’ll let the breeze blow right through with perfectly-proportioned shorts that reach to the natural waist. But don’t let that description fool you, this suit can be almost as dressy as a supremely tailored tux if you play it right (all you need is a good white or tobacco-brown linen shirt and clean loafers).
Polo Ralph Lauren Soft Tailored Suit
When you think of a beautiful, softly tailored suit, the kind with an ease and panache you’d find only in heady, idyllic foreign films, you probably aren’t thinking of Ralph Lauren. But the all-American Ralph makes some of the most debonair suiting this side of the Atlantic while looking right at home on the Italian coast (even if your summer wedding is in San Antonio, Texas).
