Massimo Alba Bowles Button-Up – White

White is the hardest colour for a shirt to be interesting in, and the usual solutions are a print, which stops it being white, or a texture, which is the better answer. Jacquard is texture made structurally. A jacquard loom lifts each warp thread on its own rather than in groups, so the pattern is built into the cloth as it is woven rather than applied to the surface afterwards, which means it is the same colour as the cloth and only appears as light moves across it. You see it at conversational distance and not from across a street, which is the correct amount of pattern for a white shirt to have.

Linen is not the easy fibre to do this in. It has almost no stretch, so it gives nothing back to a loom that is lifting individual threads thousands of times across a length of cloth, and a figured linen has always been harder to weave than a figured cotton. That is the whole reason this shirt is worth looking at closely rather than reading as a plain white one.

The rest is a camp collar, flat and open with no stand behind it, which is the least formal collar in shirt-making and the only one that looks right unbuttoned and unaccompanied. Mother-of-pearl buttons, which are cut from shell and vary slightly from one to the next. Loose through the body. It is a straightforward garment made properly, and the linen in the blend keeps it dry against the skin.

Every summer needs a white shirt that is not a business shirt and not a beach shirt. This has been our answer for two seasons.

Sixty-one percent linen, thirty-nine percent cotton, woven as a jacquard. Made in Italy. Camp collar, mother-of-pearl buttons, loose fit. Colour: White.

Loose through the chest and body, meant to be worn open or with the top buttons undone. A camp collar has no stand, so it lies flat and frames the neck rather than supporting it; buttoning it to the top is possible and is not what the collar was drawn for. Linen-heavy cloth softens considerably over the first season and creases from the moment you sit down.

With the Kevin shorts in Fango for the whole summer answer. With the Ionio2 in linen. Under the Florida cotton shirt jacket when it cools. Untucked, always.

Wash cool and hang to dry, and iron damp if you iron at all. Mother-of-pearl is brittle, so keep the iron off the buttons and turn the shirt if you are pressing the placket. Our general care guidance covers the rest.

The Bowles Button-Up in Sand is the same composition in a plain cloth with a spread collar, the Bowles Shirt is the printed cotton, the Noto2 Classic Shirt is the band collar in linen and cotton, and the Kevin Shorts are the linen shorts. There is more on the house on the Massimo Alba designer page. Everything we carry from Massimo Alba is listed together.