Made to breathe: the summer edit

Summer is the season that tells the truth about your clothes. Heat makes fabric honest. I know a polyester dress within an hour on a 30-degree day (I’m Australian, so it’s 30 degrees Celsius here). And you probably know the same feeling: the way it seals in the warmth and holds it against you like cling film.

What you want in July, you already know by feel: something that lets the air through.

Here is the part worth noticing. The fabrics that keep you cool are, almost without exception, the same ones made with less harm. Linen, organic cotton, cotton gauze, TENCEL spun from wood pulp. They breathe because they’re natural, and because they’re natural they tend to be the fibres that ask less of the planet to make and give it back gently at the end.

Comfort, elegance and the kinder choice turn out, once again, to be cut from the same cloth.

So this is a summer edit organised the way summer actually asks you to dress: by how fabrics make you feel.

Breathable cheesecloth: Baukjen

If one fabric belongs to summer, it’s cheesecloth. Loosely woven, faintly crinkled, all air and no weight, it’s the cotton equivalent of an open window. And Baukjen has built a small, beautiful summer around it.

Made in Europe, plastic-free, from one of the highest-scoring B Corps in fashion, Baukjen brings three pieces that cover most of a warm-weather wardrobe between them.

The Bella organic cheesecloth midi in bright emerald does the work of a whole outfit on its own: pure organic cotton, smocked to pull straight over your head, a jolt of jewel colour against the sun-bleached end of summer.

The Bryony cheesecloth blouse is the everyday hero: frill-collared, soft, endlessly easy over trousers or knotted at a waistband. And the Melrose double-cheesecloth wide-leg trousers in deep indigo are the grown-up answer to dressing in the heat: crinkled, roomy, elastic-waisted, cool in a way linen only wishes it were, and quietly chic with nothing more than a white blouse and bare ankles.

One practical word, because I’d want one myself: single-weave cheesecloth wears a touch sheer, so the paler pieces are best over a slip or camisole. The double cheesecloth of the trousers is more forgiving. Worn that way, this is the coolest and quietly most luxurious-looking thing you’ll own all summer.

Airy gauze: Encircled

If cheesecloth is a single open weave, crisp, crinkled, barely there, then double gauze is its softer cousin: two fine layers of cotton tacked together, so the fabric drapes with a little more body and feels cushioned against the skin.

And where Baukjen dresses it up, Encircled builds it for pure comfort: made in Canada, B Corp and Oeko-Tex certified, the Airy Gauze line is the one you’ll live in when it’s too hot to think.

The Airy Gauze relaxed button-up is the layer that does everything: oversized, dropped-shouldered, a high-low scalloped hem, worn open over a swimsuit or buttoned into a proper shirt. The Airy Gauze wide-leg trousers are its natural other half: pull-on, elastic-waisted, falling in a soft column to just above the ankle, the kind of trouser you forget you’re wearing.

The quiet joy of double gauze is that it asks almost nothing of you: it’s made to be packed, and the crinkle is the whole point, so it comes out of a bag ready to wear: cold wash, lay flat, never a dry-cleaner in sight.

A final word

The synthetic summer dress is a false economy dressed as a bargain: cheap to buy, miserable to wear, and around long after you’ve thrown it out. A breathable one made well is the opposite on every count: kinder in the heat, kinder to the earth, and yours for summers to come. It’s not a sacrifice. It’s just the better way to be dressed.