Last night, while we slept in Sarasota, Italy turned its clocks back an hour. This evening the sun will set over Rome at 5:14. Here it won't go down until almost seven.
For exactly one week, until our own clocks change next Sunday, Rome is five hours ahead of us instead of six. I always notice it the same way: the messages from friends in Italy start arriving already in the dark. And by the time they do, the women sending them have quietly changed something about how they get dressed in the morning.
Italy calls it the sun's hour
Italians have a name for each half of the year. Summer time is ora legale, the legal hour, the one decided by law. Winter time is ora solare, the sun's hour, the one the sky would keep on its own. At three o'clock this morning the clocks went back to two, and the sun's hour returned until the last Sunday of March.
The legal hour is younger than it sounds. Italy first moved its clocks in June 1916, to save fuel during the First World War, dropped the idea after the war, brought it back during the Second, and has changed the clocks every single year only since 1966. It still pays its way: Terna, which runs the national grid, estimated that the seven months of summer time in 2025 saved about 310 million kilowatt-hours, around 90 million euros.
Europe has tried to stop the ritual altogether. A 2018 European Commission consultation drew 4.6 million replies, 84 percent of them in favor of ending the clock changes, and the European Parliament voted to do it in 2019. The member states never agreed on which hour to keep. So every October, the clocks still fall back.
Five o'clock is the new evening
What that one hour changes, in practice, is the end of the working day. Yesterday a Roman leaving the office at six walked out into daylight. Tomorrow she walks out into the evening. The passeggiata, the aperitivo, the walk home past the lit shop windows: all of it now happens after dark, and for most women there is no stop at home in between.
That is the detail I find so useful. In Italy, the outfit you leave the house in at eight in the morning is the outfit you are seen in at seven at night, and from this week seven at night is fully night. So the day clothes start carrying a little evening in them.
A little shine, worn at noon
This is what I start to see in the first week of ora solare: sparkle at lunchtime. Not sequins, not a cocktail dress at the desk. A knit with a fine gold thread under a blazer. A white T-shirt with a few crystals near the collarbone, worn with trousers and flats. Something that reads as a plain top at noon and catches the light when the streetlamps come on at five.
It is the opposite of how most of us were taught to dress. We save shine for the evening and change into it. The Italian answer, once the evening starts at five, is to wear it from the morning, keep it small, and let the dark do the rest.
The two tops in these photos are exactly that kind of piece. The rhinestone top is a white cotton tee made in Italy by Joleen, with clusters of crystals scattered across the front and sheer mesh cuffs that float over the sleeves. The glitter tank by Vicolo is a sleeveless gold stretch knit with an even sparkle through the fabric, easy under a jacket at the office and easier still on its own at dinner.
We get our own hour back next Sunday, November 1st, when the clocks fall back here too. Sarasota's sunsets will slide to a quarter to six, and the strange week of being five hours from Rome will be over. Until then, borrow the Italian habit a few days early and put the shine on in the morning. More pieces like these are in the tops.
She travels to Italy each season to hand-select the boutique's collection.
Keep reading
The Italian Hour Sarasota Hasn't Caught Up To Yet
The Date an Italian Woman Trusts More Than the Thermometer
Why Italian women keep their sunglasses on in November
