Seersucker suits for men conjure two very specific images: outdoor summer weddings and ice-cold sweet tea in mid-July (also, Colonel Sanders). See, seersucker is a classic summer fabric known for its ability to keep you cool. The fabric, usually made of a lightweight cotton, is woven in such a way that it produces a crinkly texture which helps prevent it from sticking to the skin, allowing more air to flow. It’s what you want to wear when you’re obligated to attend an outdoor wedding in Palm Springs—assuming shorts will not make the happy couple, well, a happy couple. Employed with some panache and disregard for conventional suiting attitudes, the seersucker suit can look pretty sick out of matrimonial contexts too (a graphic tee and a beat-up pair of sneakers will do wonders). But for all its status as a warm weather fabric, seersucker suits aren’t as seasonal as you might expect, and there’s a lot more to the genre than the classic blue and white striped versions. So we did the hardcore investigative journalism and dug up all the best seersucker suits for men—for weddings, graduations, and beyond.
The Suit You Can Wear Straight Into Fall
Being the immensely popular person that you are, attending summer wedding after summer wedding, you’ll have plenty of chances to arrive at the function sauced up in seersucker. But a seersucker suit can easily fall into the same category as oddly-specific infomercial kitchen gadgets: great for one purpose and not much else. This wool-blended check-patterned suit from Todd Snyder handily avoids that and ensures you can wear it beyond the summer wedding circuit and well into the cooler months.
The Finer Things in Life Suit
Trim and tailored with that oh-so-refined relaxed quality reminiscent of a cigar-puffing suited Italian nonno. Thankfully, it’ll cost you less than the plane trip over to Rome.
The Business-Lunch-Over-Burgers Kind of Suit
The pinstripes give a ruthless Gordon Gecko aura, but the relaxed silhouette and crinkly fabric tell us that it ain’t all that serious.
The Pajama-Level Comfy Suit
Suits, unfairly, have a reputation for discomfort (at least, for those of us who don’t normally wear them). Savile Row tailor Richard James gracefully debunks that myth.
The Hard Flex Suit
You may only have one glorious chance to flex this hard, formal occasion or not. You definitely only live once. Buy the grail suit.
The Textbook(ish) Example
This is very nearly the quintessential seersucker suit: lightweight cotton, blue and white stripes, and a soft structure. The slight swerve? That double-breasted suit jacket.
The Hardworking, Easy-Going Suit
Cool off in this workwear-inspired suit, the perfect outfit for that semi-formal-forest wedding.
The Mall Hack Suit
If you have no idea where to go for a suit and you find yourself in the retail zoo known as ‘the mall’, head over to J.Crew. The brand’s revamp is, by now, well-documented, but the new Kenmare suit has been severely overlooked. Unlike the famed Ludlow suit, the Kenmare is refreshingly roomy.
