One hundred per cent Loro Piana silk, double-breasted, peak lapels. Silk in a jacket does something no wool does: it holds a colour with depth in daylight and reflects almost nothing under a flash, which is why it photographs well at four in the afternoon in the Alentejo and again at ten in the evening.
Ivory rather than white. White reads as a shirt at close range and as a gap in a photograph at distance; ivory holds its shape against skin, against a white shirt and against the bride's dress without competing with any of them.
Double-breasted, six buttons, two of them fastening. The double-breasted front gives a waist to a man who has none, and it removes the question of what to do about a cummerbund, which is one decision fewer on a day that already has too many.
This is the jacket for the second half of a Portuguese wedding: the dinner, the toasts, the part that runs past midnight. For the church and the daylight ceremony, a three-piece in a mid-weight wool is the more sensible answer, and both are cut here.
