Walking the Line

So yesterday I did it. I wore linen trousers for the first time this season. I know, I know, it’s not Memorial Day yet, nor is it even officially baseball season until Sunday. But, when it’s 85 degrees outside on the first of April, rules become the last of my worries.

However, lighter fabric does not have to mean looking like it’s the middle of summer and you are heading for the beach. While I always iron a nice crisp crease into my flannels in the winter, furthering the clean, constructed lines of cold weather dressing, I find adding a crease to linen trousers helps them retain some of this tidiness. One tale of the crease’s origin has King Edward VII falling from his horse in the countryside, and the frantic person to whose home he was taken pressing the royal trousers in a rush. Edward liked it so much he began wearing all his trousers as such, thus ending the days of billowing Victorian bottom-halves. With linen, these creases tend to get sort of feathery over the course of the day, but instead of looking disheveled and sloppy, the trousers just look lived in.

By the end of the summer, I sometimes find the loose, slightly crinkled look of uncreased trousers refreshingly relaxed and casual, but for now I’ll keep the crease nice and precise, and keep my linen wearing to natural and oatmeal shades. The temptation is great, but white linen and sockless driving loafers have another 5 -10 degrees to go.