Stand in line at a Milan bakery on a Saturday morning and sooner or later you will see her: a woman in a full matching suit, jacket and trousers in the same cloth, looking more relaxed than anyone else in the shop.
At home, a suit is the thing we put on for an interview, a meeting, a courtroom. On her it looks like the easiest outfit in the world. It took me years of trips to see why, and once I did, I could not stop seeing it.
The man who took the stiffness out
Part of the answer is in Milan's own history. In the mid-1970s, Giorgio Armani pulled the padding, canvas and stiff interfacing out of the jacket and let the shoulder fall where the body put it. By April 1982 he was on the cover of Time, the first fashion designer there since Christian Dior, and his soft trouser suits had made the women's suit something you could wear in or out of an office.
The house still sets the tone. In late September, Armani closed Milan Fashion Week with a collection by his niece, Silvana Armani, who now designs the women's collections. Reviewers called it looser and younger, with cotton in the mix for the first time.
But a soft jacket only explains half of what you see in that bakery line. The other half is about what she was not wearing.
What Italians mean by a complete outfit
Italians have two words for it. A woman's suit is often a tailleur, borrowed from French. A matching outfit of any kind is a completo, literally a complete one. Two pieces that agree with each other, and that is the outfit finished.
Look at how she builds it, and the pattern is always the same. The jacket and trousers do the talking. Everything else gets quieter. A soft knit, a fine T-shirt, sometimes nothing at all under a vest. Flat shoes or a low heel. One bag. We wrote a few days ago about the T-shirt Italian women wear to dinner; the suit follows the same logic.
The piece that never appears is the one most of us reach for first.
The shirt stays in the closet
It is the crisp, collared, button-down shirt. That is the thing Italian women leave out of a suit.
Once you see it, it explains everything. The pressed shirt is what makes a suit look like work: the collar spread over the lapels, the cuffs at the wrist, the buttons all the way up. Take it out and put a soft top in its place, and the same jacket and trousers suddenly look like a Saturday. The suit stops being a uniform and becomes a set of very good separates that happen to match.
In these photos, nobody is wearing one. The beige plaid suit by Barbara Alvisi, made in Italy with a relaxed double-breasted jacket and straight trousers, goes over a plain white top. The brown and cream check set by Tensione In skips the jacket altogether: a collarless vest worn as the top, over pleated skirt-trousers that move like a skirt. The powder blue vest and trouser set gets a white tee and a woven bag. Any of the three could go to a lunch, a gallery or the bakery.
It is also a gift after 40. The open neckline is kinder than a buttoned collar, it photographs softer, and in Florida it is simply cooler. A suit you wear on weekends earns its place in the closet far faster than one you save for meetings.
So try it this week. Take the suit you already own, leave the shirt on its hanger, and wear it with the softest top you have. You may find it was never an office outfit at all. Our matching pieces are together in the sets.
She travels to Italy each season to hand-select the boutique's collection.
Keep reading
Italian Women Don't Collect Jackets. They Keep Three.
The Blazer Italian Women Never Actually Take Off
