A groom's suit in Portugal. Three pieces by day, black tie by night

On the twenty-seventh of May we spent the day in the hills above Lisbon. From ten in the morning until sunset, inside a fourteenth-century monastery that now has gardens, a golf course and stone galleries where nobody raises their voice. I want to show what a wedding in a hot country looks like, because this is increasingly how our clients marry: an old house half an hour from the sea, guests who fly in the night before, and a day that begins in full sun and ends by candlelight. The groom's suit was made twice: three pieces for the ceremony, black tie for dinner.

I will start with the question I am asked every time someone comes to the atelier to order a wedding suit. Why two. The answer is short. A ceremony at one in the afternoon in open sun and a dinner in a garden by candlelight live by different rules. By day you need a suit you do not melt in and that survives natural light, which forgives nothing. At night you need a dinner jacket, because black against white, under candles and hanging lanterns, reads from the far side of the garden, while navy at nine in the evening turns grey. One garment will not answer both, and the groom is expected to look better than any of his guests.

Morning. The navy three-piece

For the ceremony we cut a three-piece in navy wool. The waistcoat matters more than it looks. In heat the jacket comes off before the first toast and the groom is left in his shirt, like everyone else. In a waistcoat he is still the groom. We chose navy because in sunlight it reads as navy, whereas black outdoors in daylight goes flat, and in photographs that shows immediately.

The tie is pale blue. At a wedding I always recommend this colour: lighter than the suit, quieter than white, and it does not compete with the dress. The square is folded straight, no points. The shirt is white with a spread collar so the knot sits without twisting. None of this is original, which is exactly why it works: at a wedding the groom should not be the day's experiment in style.

In Portugal a suit spends the whole day in the sun. Anything that sits even slightly wrong shows at midday in the open: there is no coat over the top and no restaurant gloom to help. The shoulder line and the sleeve length are visible from ten metres away. That is what the second fitting is for, and it is why a wedding suit is ordered well in advance.

Where people marry in Portugal, and what that asks of a suit

Sintra is a case of its own and it is worth understanding why before choosing cloth. The hills have their own weather: at three in the afternoon it is hot, by late afternoon the Atlantic wind gets up, and after sunset the temperature drops abruptly. A wedding in Sintra wants a cloth with body, one that does not crease at the first movement and that copes with eight or ten degrees of swing inside a single day.

Cascais and the Estoril coast are kinder in temperature and harder in humidity: the air is salt and the shirt knows it. Comporta and the Alentejo are the opposite, dry heat and white light, where sand tones and mid blues do better than a closed dark navy. In the Douro people marry at the end of summer, with cool nights and granite steps everywhere. In the Algarve and on Madeira the problem is never cold, it is the hour of the ceremony. In all of them the practical rule is the same: choose the cloth for the hour you will spend longest standing outdoors.

A note on linen, because it is the first idea almost everyone has about a summer wedding. Pure linen is magnificent at eleven in the morning and creased by three in the afternoon. For a guest it is perfect. For a groom, who will be in every photograph taken that day, I prefer a high-twist fresco wool, an open-weave Super 110 or 130, or a wool, silk and linen blend that breathes like linen and recovers like wool. It is the difference between a suit that survives the day and a suit that survives the morning.

Afternoon. The Porsche and the road

A few hours sat between the ceremony and dinner, and the couple went driving. A black Porsche 911 Turbo with the roof down, the road across the golf course, the sun lower by then. By this point the groom had changed: dinner jacket, black bow, jacket still over his arm.

For a day like this we cut the dinner jacket in wool with mohair. Mohair holds the lapel, returns its shape after two hours seated and does not crease in a car, which on this occasion was tested literally. Peak lapels faced in black silk. One button. Trousers with silk braid down the seam, no loops and no belt. A cummerbund or waistcoat with a dinner jacket I recommend to nobody: in a hot country it is one layer too many, and in a cold one it stays hidden under the jacket anyway.

Why was the dinner jacket invented in England and worn now at every wedding in the south. Why do hot countries dress more strictly at night than cold ones. Why does a black suit look dull by day while a black dinner jacket at night never misses. Because the dinner jacket was made for artificial light. Candles, lanterns in the branches, a lamp on a terrace. In sunlight it has nothing to do, and by day the groom wore navy.

The dinner jacket was made for artificial light.ATELIER 23

What the invitation actually says

Portuguese invitations resolve into three formulas and it is worth being able to translate them before ordering anything. Traje completo means a dark suit, white shirt and tie: navy or charcoal, and the groom may add a waistcoat. Black tie, or smoking, means a real dinner jacket, with a hand-tied bow, an evening shirt and braided trousers. When nothing is written, the hour decides: a ceremony before five, a suit; dinner after seven, black tie if the groom wants to give the evening that register, in which case the groomsmen should be told, because a groom in black tie surrounded by pale suits ends up looking like the best-dressed waiter at the party.

What the father of the groom and the groomsmen should wear we have covered separately and in more detail in the wedding suit guide. Here one rule is enough: the groomsmen dress half a tone below the groom, never level with him and never above.

Evening. Dinner by candlelight

By eight the table was laid in the garden and the lanterns were hanging in the branches. This is the hour the dinner jacket was cut for. A black jacket and a white shirt under candles give the contrast the whole thing was arranged for. By this point the guests are tired and the groom is not, and it shows.

A wedding in a hot country settles half of a groom's wardrobe questions for him. There is no coat to think about and no worrying what happens to the suit in the car. All that is required is that the garments fit, because nothing will be covering them all day.

The calendar of a wedding suit

I ask for two months for a wedding order, and prefer three. In summer our workshop in the Serra da Estrela is full, and nobody postpones a wedding because of a suit. A man who comes in February chooses cloth calmly and takes two unhurried fittings. A man who comes in May for a July wedding chooses among what is already in stock.

At the first conversation we look at cloth in the length and talk through the day: where the ceremony is, what time dinner starts, whether there will be a change, whether the party is indoors or out. We take measurements. The cloth then goes to our workshop in the mountains, where both of these suits were made along with everything else you see at the atelier on Avenida da Liberdade. The first fitting is a few weeks later, the second before delivery.

After the wedding

A wedding suit outlives the wedding. The navy three-piece becomes a working suit the moment the waistcoat comes off, and it is one of the few suits a man wears gladly on a weekday precisely because it was made for an important one. The dinner jacket waits for the next occasion, and the next occasion tends to arrive sooner than expected: a New Year dinner, a friend's wedding, a charity evening. It has the longest working life of anything in a man's wardrobe, and it is the only garment whose shape barely moves from decade to decade.

The day ended at half past eight in the evening.

Questions before ordering

In the catalogue: Dark Navy Suit · Ivory Silk Jacket · Black Tuxedo