Style3 August 20264 min read
What to wear in the evening in Saint-Tropez: the August wardrobe.
A light jacket, an open shirt, trousers that fall straight. The evening wardrobe on the Mediterranean asks less effort than one thinks, provided the cloth is well chosen.
By Gilles Masson, Atelier Mesure, Paris 7ᵉ
There are still places where one changes before going out. Saint-Tropez is one of them, and it shows from the late afternoon: the terraces fill with people who have taken the trouble. Modern ugliness has colonised the world in the name of comfort, until we came to believe we had to choose between the two. Here the question does not quite arise yet, and summer is the occasion to verify that it never should have.
« When people go out in the evening, they dress. And dressing is not superficiality, it is a courtesy towards other people's eyes. »
Dressing, a form of courtesy
Once evening comes, the question is not to be the best dressed on the terrace. It is to have made a gesture. A jacket laid over a shirt is enough to say that one has taken the place, and the people dining in it, into account: it is an attention, not a performance, and it is noticed by something other than the price of what one wears.
It is also the most profitable gesture of the summer wardrobe, because it costs nothing in comfort. An unlined jacket weighs less than a jumper and transforms a silhouette entirely. Everything else, the length, the shoulder, the way it falls on the hip, is settled once and for all.
A jacket, even in August
The summer misunderstanding hangs on one word: lining. A jacket that holds heat is not a formal jacket, it is a jacket built for another season. Unlined, lightly made, the shoulder soft and unpadded, it lets the air through and is worn at thirty degrees without a thought.
That leaves the cloth, and that is where everything is decided. Linen creases within the hour: that is its signature, not its flaw, and trying to prevent it means choosing another cloth altogether. Light cotton holds the line better. Wool hopsack, loosely woven, breathes more than many cottons and does not crush. Choosing the cloth depends on the evening as much as on the temperature.
Evening, on the water
At sunset the light does half the work: it lights up the blues and puts out the blacks. This is the moment for navy, for a discreet windowpane check, for a white shirt open at the collar. A tie has no business here, but the collar itself must stand on its own: badly built, it collapses onto the lapel and takes the whole outfit with it.
The rest follows the same restraint. Trousers that fall straight onto a soft shoe, sunglasses hooked at the shirt rather than pushed up on the head, nothing that glitters. The collar of a white shirt drawn to be worn open changes a silhouette more than one more jacket.
« Elegance is not a matter of means. It is having enough taste to appreciate what is beautiful, and enough judgement to refuse what is empty. »
Key points
The evening wardrobe, eight marks.
- An unlined jacket weighs less than a jumper and changes a whole outfit
- Linen creases within the hour: that is its signature, not its flaw
- Wool hopsack breathes more than many cottons and does not crush
- Navy and windowpane check at sunset, black goes out in it
- No tie in the evening on the Mediterranean, but a collar that stands open
- Trousers that fall straight onto a soft shoe, nothing that glitters
- Comfort obliges nothing: it is built into the cut, not into slackness
- Refuse what is only there to be seen: glitter ages within one season
None of this asks any effort once the clothes are right. That is the only real difference between dressing and dressing up: an outfit that falls well lets itself be forgotten the moment it is on, and the evening is spent on something else. The rest comes down to judgement, and to very little: preferring a cloth that lives to a piece that shouts, and refusing what is only there to be seen. A summer garment cut for oneself simply makes that moment repeatable, in Saint-Tropez as anywhere else.
