Massimo Alba Florida Cotton Shirt Jacket

The shirt jacket is the most useful garment invented in the last century and the hardest to get right, because it fails in two directions. Too soft and it is a shirt with delusions. Too structured and it is a bad blazer. The Florida sits on the line, and in cotton it sits closer to the shirt end than the other cloths this model is cut in, which makes it the one you can wear indoors all day without thinking about it.

Everything about the detailing points the same way. Three patch pockets, applied to the outside of the cloth rather than cut into it, which is the least formal pocket in tailoring and the one that reads as work rather than office. Horn buttons, cut from a natural material, so no two match exactly and all of them will darken slightly with handling. A cotton that is substantial enough to hold the shape of the pockets without needing anything inside the jacket to prop it up. Smoke is a soft grey with enough warmth in it to go with brown, which most greys cannot do.

It is worth saying plainly: Massimo Alba re-cuts the Florida every season in a different cloth, and the cloth is the garment. This is the cotton one. It behaves nothing like the wool version.

We have taken the Florida in three cloths now, and this is the one for the eight months of the year the other two are too warm. In Santa Fe that ratio matters more than it would somewhere else.

The Florida is the model that recurs most persistently in Massimo Alba's line, remade each season in whatever cloth the season is about, and the cotton is its plainest and most wearable form.

One hundred percent cotton, made in Italy. Three patch pockets, horn buttons, single-breasted. Colour: Smoke.

Cut as a shirt jacket, so it is roomier through the body than a tailored jacket and shorter in the skirt. It goes over a shirt or a fine knit comfortably and under a coat without bunching at the shoulder. If you intend to wear it as an outer layer over a sweater, the larger of two sizes is the more useful garment; if you want it as a shirt, take your usual. Cotton of this weight softens over the first season and then holds where it lands.

With the Stan cotton trouser, which shares the Smoke colour and the season. With the Bowles button-up underneath in white. Over the Larry crewneck in dark green when it turns.

Wash cool and hang to dry, or have it cleaned if you would rather it kept a crisper hand. Keep it out of a hot dryer, which is what shrinks the pockets out of true on an applied-pocket garment. Our general care guidance covers the rest.

The Florida Jacket in wool, silk, and cashmere is the winter cloth and the Florida Jacket in linen and silk is the summer one. The Stan Cotton Trouser is cut in Smoke as well, the Lars Shirt is the striped cotton, and the Bowles Button-Up is the linen and cotton shirt. Everything we carry from Massimo Alba is listed together.