Summer is the season that breaks most men’s relationship with layering entirely. Too warm for anything structured, too unpredictable to go without, and the wrong call either way means you spend the evening sweating through dinner or standing outside a restaurant wishing you’d brought something. The jacket question in summer is genuinely its own problem and it deserves a real answer.

What we’ve been looking for here are pieces that work with the heat rather than against it. Unlined linen blazers that pack down without looking destroyed. Overshirts in washed cotton that read as a layer without adding weight. Lightweight harringtons and coaches jackets that earn their place when the sun drops and the temperature follows. Nothing in here is trying to be a winter jacket in summer clothing.

Fit still matters. Fabric still matters. The difference between a summer jacket that looks considered and one that looks like an afterthought is always in those two things.