The Long-Haul Flight Kit
What to wear on a long haul flight, from the skin outwards. Why cotton fails in dry cabin air, what compression socks really do, and a plan for a lost bag.
A Summer in Italy: What to Pack (Spoiler: Slips)
What to pack for an Italian summer, from the skin out: seven pairs of slips, one swim brief for the pool rules, linen over the top, and why Italy is right.
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There are two ways to pack for an Italian summer. You can bring what you always bring and spend a fortnight gently overheating in bunched cotton while impeccably dressed seventy-year-olds glide past you in linen. Or you can pack the way Italy taught the world to pack, which is from the skin out.
The guidebooks skip this bit, so I'll say it plainly: for most of the modern era, the best-dressed nation on Earth wore the slip. As recently as the 2010s a national survey put it at 55% of Italian men, against 22% for boxers. That wasn't backwardness. That was a country which understands clothes making a considered decision, and every reason behind it belongs in your suitcase.
Why Italy chose the brief
The tailoring. Italian trousers are cut close, and loose underwear ruins a close-cut trouser. It bunches at the thigh and breaks the line. The slip vanishes. If your holiday wardrobe includes anything slimmer than a track pant, the slip is what makes it hang properly. Briefs for the Office: The Tailoring Argument
The heat. July in Rome is no place for loose boxers. Less fabric means less heat, snug means no friction, and good cotton or modal against the skin breathes as it should. Every warm-weather culture on the planet reached the same conclusion, from Brazil to the Philippines to Palermo.
The pool rules. A detail that delights every first-time visitor: many Italian public pools, and nearly all French ones, require snug swimwear for hygiene reasons. Loose swim shorts are banned. Italian boys grow up with swim briefs as an ordinary fact of life, which goes a long way to explaining why the underwear version never carried any stigma there. Pack accordingly, or be the tourist buying emergency trunks from a poolside vending machine in Lyon.
The packing list
Seven pairs of slips or briefs. One a day plus a laundry buffer. They wash in a hotel sink and dry overnight, which boxers simply don't. Go local for the full experience, with an Italian cotton slip from a heritage maker or the French benchmark: Italian cotton slip · Le Slip Français slip. If you want hot-weather tech fabric, micro-modal is the upgrade the Romans would have invented given the chance: CDLP brief
One pair of swim briefs. For the pool rules, the beach clubs, and the moment you look around an Italian beach and realise nobody is judging anybody. Not ready for the full slip di mare? A trunk-cut swim brief is the gateway. swim brief
Then linen shirts, one good pair of trousers, leather sandals, and restraint. Italians pack half of what you're currently planning. The underwear does more work than you'd think; once the base layer disappears, everything worn over it sits better. The flight out has its own rules, since cabin air is drier than anywhere you are going and you will be sitting still in it for hours. The Long-Haul Flight Kit
The conversion moment
Every man who spends a summer in Italy has the same realisation somewhere around day four, usually on a terrace with an espresso. The locals aren't dressing for anyone else. The slip isn't a statement there. It's just the correct tool, chosen by a culture that never confused underwear with personality.
You'll come home with olive oil, too many postcards and, if this list has done its job, a drawer that has quietly gone over to briefs. The nonni were right all along.
New to the family of styles? The field guide has the full map. Brief, Slip, Tanga, Jock: A Field Guide to Supportive Underwear