Massimo Alba Raya LS Polo

The long-sleeved polo occupies a gap most wardrobes have and few people name: warmer than a shirt, cooler than a knit, more finished than a long-sleeved tee, and less formal than any of them. In lightweight cotton jersey it stays on the comfortable side of that description, and the detail that keeps it from reading as sportswear is the buttons. Mother-of-pearl is cut from shell, so each one is slightly different in figure and colour, and it catches light the way plastic never does. Three or four of them at the placket is the entire difference between a polo that looks like a garment and one that looks like kit.

Cuoio is the colour, and it is a good one: a warm tan-brown out of the same family as everything else this house dyes.

It is the sort of thing you buy without much thought and then wear constantly, and the mother-of-pearl is why we took it over the alternatives. Small buttons are where a jersey garment either justifies itself or does not.

One hundred percent lightweight cotton jersey, made in Italy. Mother-of-pearl buttons at the placket. Long sleeve. Colour: Cuoio.

Cotton jersey at this weight relaxes slightly through the body across the first wearings and returns with washing. It layers under a jacket cleanly, since there is no collar stand to crowd a lapel, and it works alone. Take your usual size; a polo that is tight at the placket pulls the buttons out of line.

Under the Baglietto or the Florida in navy, collar out. With the Ionio2 in Caffe, tonally, which is the version worth trying first. With the Oceano jean for the plainest reading.

Wash cool and inside out, and dry low or hang. Keep the iron off the buttons, since mother-of-pearl is brittle and heat will crack it. Our general care guidance covers the rest.

The Raya Shirt is the linen and cotton knit, the Arubaw Polo Shirt is the linen jersey, the Nizza Shirt is the plain cotton jersey, and the Ionio2 Trouser in Caffe is the trouser. There is more on the house on the Massimo Alba designer page. Everything we carry from Massimo Alba is listed together.