Dressing smart in hot weather: A guide to fabrics that will help you stay cool and look good in the heat

Because not all fabrics are made equal, their properties and ability to keep you cool vary. In this article, we will look into different types of fabrics, their properties (such as breathability and colour) and how they behave in hot weather.

Reading this guide should help you choose the right fabric for your next summer outfit when you need to dress up for hot weather, all without compromising your style or comfort.

As a general rule, you want your summer suit to be made out of a light and breathable fabric. For a man’s suit, there are two types of fabric to keep in mind – one that everyone can see on the outside and the inner lining fabric.

Fortunately, there are only a handful of fabrics designed for suiting. The essential ones are:

Choosing the lining fabric will be the second most important decision when getting your perfect summer suit. Even though others can’t see it, it’s in closer contact with your body and has a massive bearing on how the suit feels. Making the wrong choice here can turn your outfit into a sweat suit. Generally, your lining fabric options are twofold:

Just as important as choosing the right fabric for your suit is selecting the shirt material. A formal dress shirt is typically made of the following two materials:

Debate about the best fabrics for hot weather isn’t complete without mentioning colours.

In short, wearing lighter colours will make you cooler and make surviving hot weather in style easier. This isn’t just a current fashion trend but is backed by science – darker colours absorb more light and thus trap heat. Examples of light colours are shades of white, beige, pink, yellow, baby blue, greys, creams and tan.

This, however, doesn’t mean your next suit should be all white. You will still need to consider both the formality of the occasion and the intended use.

To further help you with processing the information and selecting the right fabric, we have created a cheat sheet that ranks the above-mentioned fabrics on a number of factors. You can consider these based on your intended use and other variables:

As you can see, selecting the right fabric for hot weather dressing isn’t as straightforward as it may seem. We recommend you to consider a couple of factors that are important to you, such as the formality of the occasion, your budget, the fabric’s proneness to wrinkling and more. This will ultimately lead you to making the best decision. You may also want to read our in-depth guide on getting a perfectly tailored suit, where to go into further details.

Do you have any questions in regard to choosing the best fabric for your summer suit? Feel free to ask us by filling out the contact form. We are happy to help.

If you have found this guide useful, please share it with your friends or colleagues who live in a hot country or are moving to one soon.