spruced by marlene

You’re not going to argue with me that linen pants are the scourge of summer, are you? They’re a truly perfidious garment, sold as something light to wear, like a promise of a summer in the South of France. But the truth is that they lose their shape when there’s even a smidgen of humidity in the air and quickly end up looking like the exact opposite of ease, more like an unironed potato sack that gets bigger and bigger and bigger the longer the day goes on. By 1pm you’ll have to put up with the question of whether you just had lunch in a sauna.

The linen-t-shirt is a different story. A discovery from last summer when my friend Charlotte came to visit, breezed into Zara and loaded up on linen tees. Charlotte lives in Australia, so she knows heat and she swears by linen as a material for t-shirts, because it’s airy, doesn’t stick like cotton and is more robust than silk. Unlike pants I think that the summer t-shirt should look a little out of shape, as though you’ve worn it a bit already. This one’s perfect for pairing with jeans, shorts, even a sleek pencil skirt. Just never with linen pants.

From Zara in nude | From Mango with long sleeves in white, pink and light-grey | From MiH Jeans in olive | From Isabel Marant in blue | From Acne in black, natural and off-white