Welcome to White Suit September

It hasn’t just been Gyllenhaal and Mendes, either. A few other men dialed up the white-suit eccentricity—the true fashion freaks if you will. Designer Virgil Abloh showed up at the Met Gala a slouchy blazer with “Modernism” airbrushed in baby blue paint across his chest, paired with the wildest pants of the night. (It wouldn’t be an Abloh fit without a collab: he tapped muralist and artist Charlie Doves for the airbrushed art.) 

At the very same event, Timothée Chalamet showed up in a perplexing mix of Haider Ackermann, Rick Owens, and Converse—wearing a tailored jacket with sweatpants and sneakers in a way that only a young heartthrob could. And lastly, while not quite a suit, Russell Westbrook’s pairing of a white cardigan and near-full-length skirt (both Thom Browne) still counts as an unconventional way of wearing a boatload of white in mid-September.

Wearing white suiting will always be a big-time style move, but the risk is often worth the reward. And against the backdrop of today’s intentionally bad-but-good suits, breezy whites worn days away from the official start of fall doesn’t feel quite as risky as it once did. The further we get into the year, the more tailoring continues to be bold, anarchic, and perhaps most importantly, fun. And yes, that includes the white suit—even if it’s after Labor Day.