Today's guest is Frank. A classy man I found at Club Monaco.
This is how to stay cool in a hot summer day: cool-grey linen suit over off-white linen shirt.
Good shade of grey, clean lines, well fitted. I feel no need to describe further, as Frank naturally shows it all perfectly! The outfit works for casual and formal occasions. Taking a stroll to the gallery, attending a dinner or wedding.
Linen opens up a whole range of colour palette. Suits don't always have to be in black, navy, grey, or white. Linen works well with pastel colours. Because the light absorbed/reflected is softened by the fibre, the colour does not read as solid. So if you choose baby pink, it will rather read as a tint, but not a solid colour. It's kind of like a building with a blank facade (with no openings or details), but the wall is made out of bricks, where you see the weathering of the bricks and mortar courses composed of many shades and tones. It's not just simply a 'red' brick wall, or a 'solid blank wall'. Linen is one of my favourite fabrics which read more as a texture, rather than the colour it's dyed with.
In the photo below is one of my favourite brick walls in Ottawa. It faces a parking lot, which is not a good use of space in Centretown, and it is in a poor condition. Although, I'm hoping that this site will be one day transformed into a lively place, featuring this brick wall, perhaps as a movie screen or a vertical garden... What's attractive about this wall is that the brick size changes. It's sneaky, it's quirky, it's fit! The cracks are not great structurally but fantastic visually!
An extra point goes to the Chinese collar! Playing with collar details is a good trick to avoid the 'businessy' look. A good collar line and good buttons add enough of a flair. It's all about the overall subtlety and modest details. Accessories should be carried for functional purposes and not decorative. But wild flowers in the pocket are forever cute!
