Ode to White Suits & Jackets (White Pants & Palm Beach Cloth Too)

White tailoring is a flex. Wearing a white suit, jacket, or even a trouser can occasion, not in terms of formality but leisure. You don’t have to worry about getting it dirty, because you probably aren’t going to do anything that would lead to it getting dirty. It’s agency, privilege, and power all in one garment.

With their stark color (or absence of it?), a white suit is the epitome of impracticality and elegance. I guess these qualities are what give such suits a certain charm, though that usually isn’t enough to make menswear enthusiasts commit to owning one. Even if white suits can be made from any cloth to fit our needs (linen, cotton twill, or wool flannel to name a few) and can be styled easily, guys typical refrain from buying one.

It’s funny that we think of white suits this way. After all, un-dyed cotton and linen naturally appear like a shade of of white/off-white/cream, which means that a white garment should be quite natural to wear as well, right? Don’t we already wear so much khaki? Is white or cream that much of a step further? And yes, for the sake of this blog post, white refers to general light-colored suits in off white, cream natural/beige, and maybe some light seersuckers.

Even though our perception of white can be connected to purity (most connotations with color have roots in religion) white fabric historically was common among practical clothes, furthering this paradox. Doctors, painters, athletes (like tennis in the past and baseball now), and martial artists tend to be found in white uniforms; milkmen famously wore white. Granted cleaning white uniforms when they eventually got dirty or soiled would be an easy feat; we just need to bleach them in hot water and it would go back to being stark white.

Perhaps this whole thing is about white in tailoring (for the purposes of this blog post, I’m also including cream, off-white, etc). Suits themselves have served as a mark of class for a long time. Everyone had tended to have at least one suit, but they had their place (usually in business or some other formal occasion). Doing a suit, jacket, or even trousers in white is a power move, mainly because it isn’t typical business attire. It is a privilege to wear a not care; if you got it dirty, you were most likely privileged to easily get in clean.

Gentry on tour in their colonized dominions would wear white suits and pith helmets, showing the literal power of white tailoring in what they would consider to be an uncivilized world; the crazy thing is that a white suit would still be a casual thing for them to wear (as black and white tie were still the pinnacle of formality). That pompous vibe tends to extended to fictional characters. I think of well-to-do men like Gatsby and Jake Gittes both of whom are dandy dressers that people have commented on in-universe. With power comes the privilege of intention, to wear things because you wanted to. As this Slate article implies, there are moments for these men where a white suit just makes more sense than a dark blue one. It’s almost as if the power comes from the suit itself, rather than the person wearing it.

That “power” can be intimidating, but this doesn’t need to be the case. In fact, I’d love it if we were able to wear white tailoring for ourselves and dilute all the preconceptions that come with it. It’s supposed to be fun!

Old illustrations make white tailoring look so easy to wear.

An absolutely epic fit…to promote smoking. I do love white suits, striped shirts and geometric ties.

Even when we take out the social and cultural perception of color, white suits remain incredibly intentional. White reflects the sun, which makes it the best to wear in warm weather. It’s even better if the cloth itself was lightweight and appropriate for the weather, which means white in linen, cotton, or breathable wool just makes practical sense. Wearing a white suit, jacket, or trousers is a decision to be firmly within a season. Menswear has roots in versatility, so again, making such a pointed choice is a bit of a flex and a privilege. Winter whites play into that more, as you are intentionally going against convention; white in a sea of gloomy browns, greys, and blues calls a lot of attention to yourself. White in summer is the practical and easy choice, or so the case would seem to be.

Plenty of menswear ads (or even ads in general) showed men in white suits. They were promoted alongside standard options for summer, which does dilute the special aura white tailoring seems to have. When suits were just a common type of garment that was made in formal, business, and sportswear (casual) variations, white seems like a natural offering, especially for summer. Period illustrations certainly succeed in showing that wearing white takes no effort at all. Though perhaps this is just advertising and not reflective of real life I’m still doubtful (especially with photographs of not only movie stars, but regular people) but maybe white suits were indeed a rarified garment even in the Golden Era. And maybe that’s just because white is inherently a special color.

It doesn’t help that vintage white suits, jackets, and trousers are difficult to find and when you do find them, they cost a pretty penny. This may be due to the fact that white suits in summer fabrics just don’t hold up as well as hearty flannels, thick gabardines, and spongey tweeds. The ones that do may be soiled due to neglect and without someone to clean them for years, there just isn’t value in the color; the whole reason to get any variation of white is the pureness of the shade.

They made Palm beach in other fabrics, but white is the most famous!

Another contributing factor to vintage menswear’s obsession with white suits is Palm Beach Cloth. Produced by Goodall Mills until the 1950s, Palm Beach was the firm’s proprietary fabric made up of cotton, mohair, wool, and rayon; the exact mixture varied over the years. While they produced the fabric in different colors, they were most known for their whites and creams, making jackets and trousers (and in some special cases, military uniforms). Now the fabric isn’t inherently breathable (it is not open weave), but it does “wear cool” and look really great in white and cream, which is why it became popular in the 1930s-1940s for summer tailoring. According to this intricate guide written Spencer Stewart of Bozeman Vintage, people even started using “Palm Beach” to refer to any light colored suit, similar to how we colloquially use Xerox or Kleenex. Unfortunately, Palm Beach fabric ceased to exist in the 1950 due to dwindling profits, though the brand stayed on in name only. This is why you may have seen Palm Beach suits from the 1970s but not made of their famous fabric.

The fact that Palm Beach fabric is not only famous for being certain light shades and is able to be dated to a specific era, makes white suits take on a whole new meaning in vintage circles. Yes, white suits in cotton and linen did exist back then, but if you saw a vintage collector post a white or cream suit, it was most likely Palm Beach. And since white suits were sportswear, such suits tended to have cool details that you don’t find on typical business attire such as patch pockets, swelled edges, and action backs.

Wearing a white suit was a way to flex your picking skills (or your wallet) and the inherent power of wearing white. But it was more about the rare part than the power part. It wasn’t a dandy move but simply a concern of availability. White tailoring was simply uncommon; it was something that should be more popular (and there for easy to wear) but it physically can’t be due to the perceived lack of availability. After all, the illustrations and photographs made it like wearing it was a no-brainer. Perhaps more people would wear it if we simply had more white suits to wear!

I ended up owning quite a few pieces of Palm Beach over the years: an odd DB jacket and later a full DB suit thanks to a lucky eBay link. I also owned one non-Palm Beach jacket: a white linen action back. And despite these garments being considered “bold” moves for a wardrobe, they were surprisingly easy to wear. I wore them with bold swing ties, colorful alohas, tee shirts, and my beloved striped shirts and geometric foulards. To me, wearing a white suit wasn’t a dandy or a power move or even a flex to me. I didn’t even feel like it was about looking vintage, though wearing white tailoring does have an anachronistic vibe. No, wearing them was just about being seasonal– we wear sweaters in fall/winter and white suits and jackets in spring/summer. It made sense!

In short, the anxieties we have for white tailoring is all in our head. Its easy to wear!

Dapper Day 2014, one of the first times I saw Palm Beach in person. My friend Dylan made it look so easy to wear!

While any other jacket may have worked, it’s almost as if the white jacket was the *best* choice. The white jacket lets me lean into that dandy vibe.

In the current world of #menswear and fashion as a hobby, white in tailoring seems to have taken on a new almost modernist meaning. By which I mean, wearing these garments in the modern day seems to reference the history of wearing white, withou upholding them. After all, guys can wear white and not be on vacation or in the gentry class. This makes the white suit a prime candidate for a bit of subversion or re-contextualization when they are worn by guys whose only “true” ties to suits are that they simply enjoy it.

The white suit becomes a bit of a costume but done in a fun and positive way that anyone can get into. Wearers want to do a nod to midcentury vacation attire or reference Tom Wolfe and Ralph Lauren (who has made many renewed cases for white suits through his products and lookbooks). No one is trying to fake their lives and con their way into being rich by wearing a white suit. The people who wear white suits are firmly aware of their impracticality and history; the absurdity of their actual position to the preconceptions of white tailoring is fun. That’s at least true for my friends and I.

It’s also just a fun, jaunty look. It’s inherently bold. Some may see it as imposing due to its history, but in the modern era I see it as carefree, almost like the choice to wear a white sneaker over a traditional brown or black leather shoe. There is a freshness to white tailoring that seems appropriate as a no-brainer for spring/summer, being an option that is “old school” that isn’t the tried and true navy, brown, or grey suits (which can all obviously be worn year-round anyway). The intentionality is where the amusement comes in.

I feel like there are some moves that make white tailoring easy to wear. Leaning into the slouch is almost imperative here, which is why white linens or cotton mixtures in a big silhouette takes away any stuffiness whether you’re in a suit, jacket, or trouser. But even then, a structured white suit still has a charm to it. It’s intentionally stuffy in something that is meant to be casual. It’s fun to think that you can have so much ease in a color that most people find precious. You’ll see the variety of expressions in the plethora of images I’ve put below.

You’ll also notice that most white suits and jackets tend to be DB or at least have peak lapels; maybe a notch lapel doesn’t have enough oomph in the eyes of guys who wear white tailoring. While those formal details may not make sense for typical white casual cloth, those details go hand in hand with the perceived formality of wearing white, making for a fun juxtaposition. It can make the jacket feel like it’s ripped from black tie, even if you’re wearing it with a tie and grey trousers. I wonder if that’s the appeal of a white odd jacket: it’s the fanciest way of wearing separates while still being casual.

Bold, yellow florals are welcomed by an off-white jacket, making the shirt even easier to wear.

I get to wear elegant blues and purples while remaining at ease. That’s the effect of white tailoring (at least when its slouchy).

Those qualities provide you with a variety of ways to wear your white jackets and suits. Injecting color seems to be the easiest, as white almost invites you to fill in the blanks. I’ve found that my white jacket sand suits easily work with colors that may require more thought for a typical navy or grey suit. As a result, there is always a compelling invitation to wear Bengals and reverse stripe shirts (as well as my abstract ties) whenever I get the hankering for a white suit or jacket. Of course, this plethora of color and pattern may be at odds with the perception of formality, but I love playing with “subversion” (it’s not really that, because people have worn color with white suits for a long time).

The non-tie guys can always lean on solid or tonal pairings with white tailoring. Stone, khaki, beige, and chocolate brown just looks so good with white. It may look a bit like an orphaned suit (which simply depends on the shade of brown), but it will make you look like you’re perpetually on a warm-weather vacation thanks to how easy it looks. In fact, the mixture of white with brown feels more like a fashion choice than one too decidedly menswear, which may help out the guys who aren’t exactly tie-wearing dressers.

That being said, full white suits or even white odd jackets are still a rare sight outside of Pitti Uomo, where peacocking is the name of the game (the game to get your photo taken, that is). But thankfully the same can’t be said of white odd trouser. In fact, Pitti Uomo brings to mind the ubiquity of white trousers, which #menswear has always liked. It’s been “democratized”, showing that white pants can be worn by all. This is clearly shown in the variations white pants can take. White jeans, off-white linen trousers, stone chinos, cream painter’s pants, all of them are regarded as a staple (or dare I say a basic) in the menswear world.

It almost seems like it’s a small way for people to capture a small essence of white tailoring in a much more digestible way. It feels a touch preppy and a bit naval when one wears white pants, which is usually more palatable than the bold use of a white jacket or a suit. Granted, the white trouser is a bit of a meme (especially when it’s seen at Pitti for the bajillionth time or “oddly” worn with fall/winter clothing), but it is nice to see it around. After all, the white odd trouser was extremely popular during the Golden Era, so its only natural that it’s stuck around. But I’d still like it if we saw more than white pants out there!

2023. Different suit, but the same guy who loves white suits!

I’m happy to say that white tailoring is a truly foundational part of my style. Every time warm weather rolls around, I get extremely excited to wear my full white suit or my white odd jacket (or my white suit jacket as an odd jacket). It just makes sense, not because I am a fancy person, but because I like slouchy, bold clothes and a white suit not only is that thing, but it even invites other garments to join in its boldness. It’s meant to be fun and easy and I certainly feel like it (and play into it) when I get to wear it.

In fact, in building out this blog post I found that I wear white tailoring a lot. Wearing white jackets and suits is a big part of my summer uniform, worn to everything from Dapper Day to well, visiting my local boba shop. It’s just as easy to wear as any navy or brown jacket, which you guys know I wear quite often year round. I’ve said it before, but the action of wearing a beloved garment is Occasion enough! And my white garments are my babies.

I’ve learned that we don’t need to be famous writers, secret new money gangsters, or even be a rich dude on vacation in order to wear white tailoring; I also don’t need to wait for a black tie event to roll around. White suits, jackets, and pants can be worn anytime by anyone. Yes, it may be a while for a white suit to shake its history and connotations to privilege, but I still think that wearing it worth the effort to make our own histories with such a garment. Don’t get me wrong, I do not think that wearing white tailoring is anything close to praxis, but at the very least, people should be able see themselves in a garment something and be empowered to wear it. My hope is that by wearing it more often and encouraging others to try it, we will lessen the anxities and preconceptions people. White suits are for all!

Obviously I am not the only one out of my friends who likes to wear white/cream/etc, which is why it is the focus of the latest episode of Comedy Bang Bang. Spencer loves wearing white pants, though instead of tailoring, he pairs his with workwear and milsurp; it helps that his white pants are the original workwear ones, or at least are in that vein. MJ on the other than loves wearing color and wearing white only helps him do so. We all have a love of white clothing and we want to make case for you to wear it as well. Take a listen below!