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.