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We dress some of the best-dressed men in Montreal, Monday through Friday. We have also seen what a few of them wear on Saturday, and we would like to talk about it. Smart casual for men is the dress code that defeats more of our clients than black tie ever has — black tie comes with rules, and Saturday comes with none. So a man who can assemble a boardroom wardrobe without breaking a sweat stands in front of his closet on the weekend and reaches, every time, for a fleece he got at a golf tournament in 2019. Here is our position: the weekend deserves the same intention as the workweek, at half the formality and none of the stiffness. In early October, with the terrasses making their last stand and the Laurentians turning orange, it is the best dressing of the year.
What smart casual for men actually means
Ignore the definitions written by hotel dress codes. Smart casual, as we practise it, is three things: real trousers, a collar or a proper knit, and shoes made by a shoemaker. That's it. It is not your oldest suit with the tie removed — a worsted suit jacket over jeans reads as a man who got dressed in two different rooms. And it is not athleisure redeemed by an expensive watch. The test we offer clients is simple. If you ran into your biggest client at the Jean-Talon market on a Saturday morning, would you stand a little taller, or angle yourself behind the tomatoes?
On the collar question we will take a firm position, because someone should: past a certain age a knitted polo beats a t-shirt every single time. Not the piqué polo of company golf days — a fine-gauge knit with a real collar that sits properly under anything you put over it. Gran Sasso, the Abruzzo knitwear house we brought in this fall, makes the best version we have carried in years: an extrafine merino long-sleeve polo in dark brown, $475, in the colour we keep telling you is this season's navy. Worn alone it is complete. Under a jacket it is quietly better than most shirts.
The weekend jacket that is not a jacket
What the blazer does for the office, the knit cardigan-overshirt does for the weekend — and this fall we finally have the one we had been looking for. The Gran Sasso cardigan-overshirt in cream Super Geelong wool, $625, has the shoulders and pockets of an overshirt and the hand of a very good sweater. It gives you a finished layer — somewhere to put your shoulders, as we say in the fitting room — without a millimetre of structure. Over the brown polo, with dark trousers, it is a whole answer to the smart casual question. And yes, cream, in October. Dark trousers below, coffee held with two hands, and it wears beautifully; a man afraid of a light-coloured knit is a man who has decided the weekend doesn't rate. The rest of our knit wall works the same shift — crews from $295, half-zips, the full lineup is here.
Below the waist: the five-pocket rule
Jeans are allowed. Good ones. The five-pocket cut is the most useful trouser shape a man owns on the weekend, because it carries the ease of denim whether or not it is denim at all. Tramarossa's dark blue soft-dye five-pocket, $495, cut in Vicenza by people who think about trousers the way Corneliani thinks about jackets, is the pair we point to first: dark, clean, no distressing, no ornamental stitching, and enough stretch to survive a Sunday drive to the orchards. The rule on any five-pocket is the rule on denim generally — it should fit like your tailored trousers do. If it needs a belt cinched to the last hole, it is the wrong size, not the right style.
Underneath all of it: suede, because suede is what autumn is for. Magnanni's taupe suede Garner derby, $575, does the whole weekend — polo, overshirt, five-pocket — without once looking like it is trying. Leather sneakers are fine too, provided they are unlettered and kept clean. Waterproof any suede before it meets a Montreal sidewalk in October; we covered the routine in our shoe-care guide last month, and we stock the Saphir to do it.
The part nobody does
Here is the quiet advantage, and almost no one takes it: weekend clothes can be altered. The same tailors who take in your suit jackets will shorten a sleeve on that overshirt, hem a five-pocket to sit correctly on a derby, taper a knit that boxes you. It costs little and it is the entire difference between casual and careless. Bring the weekend half of your closet to us on Decarie Boulevard — or book a proper appointment — and give Saturday the fifteen minutes of attention Monday has been getting for years. The suits will not mind sharing.
