The summer wardrobe

The pieces that make me feel like me when it's too hot to think.

My summer wardrobe has three parts: Going Out, which this summer mainly means going to a hospital or for tests, maybe a restaurant or coffee thrown in there as well; Family Life, which means family meals at the house or going out for breakfast or the supermarket; At Home, which means going nowhere and mainly seeing no one except my nearest and dearest and delivery men.

There is crossover only as far as footwear and the hat/bag situation is concerned when I leave my flat, and the only thing that really gets switched up there is whether I take my straw bag or one of my many totes, and this is always dictated by practicality. Before it got very hot I invariably wore my friulane, now I invariably wear my Grenson sandals.

My At Home wardrobe is a black cotton tank or camisole, slowly shredding away to holes but soft and comfortable, with a pair of black loose lounge/pyjama pants. All of these are frequently washed in the evening and dry by the following morning to be worn again. I have zero interest in upgrading or elevating this outfit. I look at people’s cute little loungewear sets and think I want them, but I don’t. Putting my loose pants and my ancient top on is like putting on another skin, and I don’t need a variation on perfection. Also, I don’t have to worry about boring anyone else with my boring outfit, so I’m quite happy in the same thing every day.

My supermarket/breakfast/family clothes are one of two pairs of trousers, and either a stripy shirt or a plain coloured one. Sorry Fam, you must be tired of seeing me in these, but its all about the soft warm blue for me this summer. I have blue eyes, and as a child was constantly dressed in blue, so when I was old enough to choose my clothes, I avoided blue for decades. I really started to embrace it at the beginning of lockdown, when I realised I was reaching for the same two cashmere sweaters and the same pair of jeans all the time, because they were the precise mid warm shade that made me feel safe and calm. I have loved those blues ever since, and I’m not surprised to see that they are the basis for my everyday wardrobe this summer.

My Going Out clothes this summer are invariably Liberty pyjama bottoms and one of a few linen shirts. Normally I’d be wearing a bit more variety in my tops, but this is not the summer for that. I’ve been living in shirts, and not even all of the shirts I own. My summer wardrobe doesn’t change much, year to year, but each summer I end up wearing the same few pieces over and over… it’s just never the same exact selection as the year before. This year I am all about the patterned bottoms, whereas last year I was locked into a dark green/purple obsession.

I have been thinking about effortless dressing lately, mainly because I have been putting zero effort into getting dressed. I have also been looking at the people around me, which means that I am looking at people getting on with their everyday lives, or people who are on holiday (there are a lot of second homes around here): I am not seeing the people who go to work every day, apart from when I see my daughter in the evening, when she is markedly more put-together than most of the people I see every day.

My town is not Rome. It’s a holiday town in that the population surges in the summer and on high days and holidays, but it’s a place people come home to family holiday homes rather than attracting tourists, unlike the towns on the lake. At the weekends during the summer each area puts on its own equivalent of a block party, and in the evening everyone is out and about.

During the day, the women I see are on their way to the lake, or just doing their shopping. Everyone is wearing loose layers, floaty dresses, sometimes a tank top with a loose bottom: skirt, trousers or shorts. Often there’s a simple little shift dress. In the evening, it’s more of the same (the temperatures don’t change - it was 34 degrees at 6 pm the evening before I wrote this), maybe a bit smarter as the commuters are back and they have had a shower and put on something fresh before walking up to the piazza. The youth are back from the beach and the girls are showing off their tans wearing tiny little shorts and little bra tops - predominantly in black.

Everyone looks appropriately dressed for the heat in linen and cotton, nobody is trying very hard, everyone is just trying to get through the day. The chicest anyone is going to get is just looking prettily summer-appropriate in a lovely (flat) sandal and a well-cut outfit. It looks effortless. No one looks as though they stood in front of the mirror agonising over which thing to add or take off. No one is wearing anything approaching a “third piece”. Almost everyone looks as though they made an effort to look nice, and some people look as though they rolled out of bed and into the shower and grabbed the first clean, cool layers they could find, slapping on SPF as they ran out the door and cramming a hat onto wet hair (yes, this is sometimes me, when I get a phone call summoning me to breakfast at the pasticceria without fair warning).

In a few weeks I’ll be one of the commuters again, and I’m interested to see if what I choose from my wardrobe to expand it - not even I think two pairs of pyjamas, however beautiful, will take me all the way through the next couple of months. I have lovely plain linen trousers, and I’m looking forward to wearing them again. Just not quite yet.