Alfred Tong

Luca Faloni is a former management consultant. There, we said it. But in menswear, that may – as a management consultant might say – represent a strategic advantage over the moody mercurial creative genius of popular imagination. His eponymous brand is also, lately, a growth strategy. Last year it opened a second Manhattan address, a 3,500-square-foot boutique in the Meatpacking District with Canaletto walnut fittings and Carrara marble – and, last fall, its first Toronto store, on Bloor Street in Yorkville, its third North American market after New York and Miami. For a label founded online to bypass the traditional wholesale markup, opening its own stores has become Luca Faloni’s next stage of growth. ‘You need to be focused on giving men what they want.

Oliver Spencer, designer and founder of London-based luxury formalwear brand Favourbrook, has a few thoughts about summer style. For a start, he is unimpressed by the type of men who turn up at the races squeezed into “tight suits” and seeming to want to look like an extra from Peaky Blinders. He is equally dismissive of the long reign of beige discretion. “We’re all a little bored of that ‘quiet luxury,’” he says. “No thanks. No more.” For Spencer, the answer is obvious. Summer should be fun, fancy, colorful, and, above all, joyful. He dislikes the idea of “occasionwear” altogether.