Massimo Alba Lars Shirt

A stripe on an overshirt is a more interesting decision than a stripe on a shirt, because the stripe has to survive being interrupted. Pockets, flaps, and a jacket-weight cotton all break the pattern, and a badly drawn stripe turns into visual noise at every seam. Done properly it does the opposite: the breaks give the garment structure and the eye something to follow, and the shirt reads as considered rather than as patterned.

Horn buttons, cut from a natural material, so no two are quite alike and all of them darken slightly with handling. A flap pocket, which is the detail that pushes the garment across the line from shirt into shirt jacket. In Fango, a grey-brown that lets a stripe sit quietly. This is a piece for the middle of the year, when a jacket is too much and a shirt is not quite enough, which in Santa Fe is most of spring and most of autumn.

We keep looking for the layer between a shirt and a jacket, because it is the hardest thing of its kind to buy well and the easiest to wear once you have it. This is the striped answer to it.

One hundred percent cotton, striped, made in Italy. Horn buttons, chest pocket with flap. Colour: Fango.

Cut fuller than a shirt so it can go over one, and short enough in the body to work untucked. If you intend to wear it as an outer layer over a knit, the larger of two sizes is the more useful garment. Cotton at overshirt weight softens through the first season and then holds.

Over the Nizza or a plain tee with the Winch2 or the Oceano jean. Under the Baglietto in cold weather, where the stripe at the collar and cuff is the only part that shows and is better for it.

Wash cool and hang to dry, or press it if you want it to sit crisply as a layer. Keep the iron off the horn buttons. Our general care guidance covers the rest.

The Florida Cotton Shirt Jacket is the cotton jacket to wear over it, the Bowles Button-Up is the linen and cotton shirt, the Winch2 Trousers are the corduroy, and the Oceano Jean is the selvedge denim. There is more on the house on the Massimo Alba designer page. Everything we carry from Massimo Alba is listed together.