Fresco and hopsack: The keys to a summer suit

Guest blog by Simon Crompton from Permanent Style



Summer suits don’t have a great reputation. They tend to be rather bold affairs and, over the years, acquire connotations of the old and the fusty.

In the UK, linen is the tailor’s first choice for summer. Which makes sense. It is lightweight and wicks moisture effectively away from the skin. But in its standard tan and yellow manifestations, it has associations with old men in ill-fitting jackets, panama hat askew on their heads, drool slowly dripping down the MCC tie as they snooze in the corner of a club. It is rarely sharp, youthful or contemporary.

Seersucker suffers similar problems in the US. It has enjoyed a bit of a renaissance recently, with brands like J Crew putting out shorter, younger models. But the association with southern gentleman is intact, as are the images of portly Congressmen wearing their blue-and-white-striped suit on the designated day each year.

Most importantly, neither linen or seersucker is really a formal cloth. Men that wear them to the office as a substitute for worsted usually look out of place. They should really be looking for open-weave or high-twist fabrics, like fresco and hopsack.

By using standard worsteds, but weaving them loosely and giving them particular finishes, fresco and hopsack achieve the formality of a standard suit but with unparalleled breathability. When a breeze gets up, a man wearing fresco should feel like he’s wearing nothing at all.

There is a range here, as in all cloths. At one end is fresco and finmeresco (the first being the generic name and the second Smith Woolens’ trademarked brand). These two are the sharp end of the range. They are treated to stay stiff and so hold a crease better than their lightweight cousins.

Further down the range is hopsack, which is a reference to the weave rather than the wool or the weight: so hopsacks vary but they are all open in structure and less stiff than fresco – perhaps best suited to a blazer than a suit. And then, at the other end of the range, are the real softies. These blend silk with the open-weave wool to create something smooth and liquid. King of the silk blends is the Sunbeam range from Harrisons; definitely for an odd jacket and not a suit: start with the navy and work towards the brighter checks.

Linen can be wonderful. My tip: go for a very heavy, Irish version; it will wrinkle less. Seersucker has a indulgently spongy softness. But if you want a smart suit that will be cool all summer long, look to the open-weave worsteds and ask for fresco or hopsack. You won’t believe it’s wool.