Massimo Alba Catch2 Jacket

The white linen jacket is the most photographed and least owned garment in menswear, and the reason is that it is genuinely difficult. It shows everything. It creases within an hour and stays creased. It has no versatility at all: there is no month of the year in which it is merely appropriate rather than either exactly right or completely wrong. Everything that makes it hard is also what makes it worth having, because a garment with that little margin has to be correct in its cut or it is nothing.

Linen is the only cloth that earns the colour. It is a bast fibre, hollow and highly conductive, so it carries heat away from the body faster than anything else that can be tailored, and in white it reflects rather than absorbs. The two decisions compound. A white linen jacket is the coolest thing a man can wear and still be dressed in.

The make follows the same argument the whole way down. It is unlined, and on a linen jacket that is not an economy, it is the point: a lining is a second layer sitting across the back and the chest, usually in something that does not breathe, and it quietly undoes most of what linen was chosen for. Take it out and there is one layer between you and the afternoon. Three buttons rather than two, which closes the chest higher and keeps the front upright on a cloth that has no memory of its own to hold it there. Three flap pockets, and a vent, so the jacket sits properly when you do. The one piece of formal grammar it keeps is the notched lapel, and it is the right thing to keep: white linen with nothing conventional anywhere on it tips into costume within a season, and the notch is the detail that holds the garment to tailoring rather than to a resort.

There is a version of summer that requires a jacket and does not require a suit, and it comes round every year. This is the piece for it.

One hundred percent linen, made in Italy. Single-breasted with a three-button front, a notched lapel, three flap pockets, and a vent. Unlined. Colour: White.

Unlined jackets read closer to the body than lined ones, because there is nothing between the cloth and your shirt, so expect this to feel less like structure and more like a shirt with authority. It also has nowhere to hide a shoulder that is wrong for you, which is the part to judge in person if you can. Linen creases at the elbow and across the back from the first wearing and will not be persuaded otherwise, which is the fibre and not the make. It has no recovery, so take the size you can move in rather than the one that looks best standing still. Expect it to soften and relax noticeably over a season.

Over the Bowles button-up in Sand or the Canary in Cocoa, with the Ionio2 in Ferro. Over the Nizza with the Kevin shorts, which is the least formal thing this jacket will do.

Air it and hang it on a shaped hanger, and use a cleaner rather than a machine, because this is tailoring even though it is linen. An unlined jacket has fewer places to hide a bad pressing, so choose the cleaner carefully. On white, deal with a mark quickly; linen takes a stain readily and holds on to it. Our linen care guidance covers the rest.

The Florida Jacket in linen and silk is the shirt jacket, the Baglietto Jacket is the virgin wool, the Bowles Button-Up in Sand is the linen and cotton shirt, and the Canary Button-Up is the linen one. There is more on the house on the Massimo Alba designer page. Everything we carry from Massimo Alba is listed together.