Blazer

Blazer is a jacket dark blue or black and absolutely double-breasted. The main character in the book Vestiti, Usciamo (“Get Dressed, Let’s Go Out”), an ironic best-seller on elegance published by Mondadori in 1985, with a women’s section by Chiara Boni and a men’s section by Luigi Settembrini. This is the most important jacket in the wardrobe. “Dark blue, almost black, absolutely double-breasted, it must be worn in Winter with dark-grey flannel trousers and, sometimes, in a particularly casual version, with cover-coat beige-green trousers.” The savage combination of a blazer with blue jeans, adopted sometimes by people otherwise above suspicion, is so obvious and banal as to be deplorable. The shoes must necessarily be brown, better if they are suede. Also acceptable are the so-called Desert Boots. It is a sports jacket but one must never think of picking it up in the American colors of light blue or Olympic red. One must carefully avoid those horrible patches which are applied to the breast pocket, naming the college you never attended or the yacht club you don’t belong to. The blazer is the most important jacket of the wardrobe, as much for the Winter as for the Summer. A real wild card, if it is well cut you can wear it confidently on almost any occasion, from casual to the most formal. It should be noted that for evenings that are elegant but not too elegant, these days, especially in Paris, there is a trend of wearing a blazer (with black shoes) instead of a smoking jacket. In Summer, with a beautiful shirt and an amusing handkerchief in the breast pocket, it can even be worn without a tie. It is the only jacket that can do without one. In Summer, a blazer can be matched with white linen trousers, dark-grey light wool trousers, or beige-light green gabardine trousers.