Every October I play a small game on the streets of an Italian city. I count what has disappeared since August. The weather hasn't changed much. The streets have.
There are always the same five things, and the order they vanish in is almost always the same. What took me longest to see was the reason. It is not the temperature, and it is not the calendar.
The first three go without a word
1. The wide-brimmed sun hat. It goes first, and it goes fast. All summer it is on every head from Capri to Lake Como. By the second week of October you will not see one in town, even at noon. It left with the straw bag, which Italian women retire on their own schedule, as we wrote in August.
2. Espadrilles and rope soles. The jute sole is a summer signal, like a tan line. In October the feet close up into loafers and low leather shoes, even on a day warm enough for bare ankles. The ankles often stay bare. The rope does not.
3. The loud holiday print. Lemons, palm leaves, the big Riviera florals that look so right in a beach town in July. They are vacation prints, and in the city they start to look like souvenirs. Small, faded, quiet prints survive, like the toile-like pattern on the linen dress in these photos. The postcard ones go in a box.
The two Americans don't notice
4. Bare shoulders after dark. This is the one visitors miss. The strappy summer dress does not disappear. It simply stops going out at night on its own. From October, something with sleeves goes over it after sunset, almost always a jacket rather than a sweater. A mint sundress with lace at the neckline, like this one, spends the day as it is and the evening under a short black jacket, like the one from our Chanel-style set.
5. Linen as the whole outfit. Italians think of linen as a summer fabric in a way we don't. It does not vanish, but it stops being the only thing she has on. A linen shirt dress gets a jacket and a closed shoe, or it gets folded away. Here in Florida, I keep mine out much longer, because a blend with some linen in it is still the most sensible thing to wear to lunch in October. I just stop wearing it as if I were on the beach.
What the five have in common
Look at the list again. The hat, the rope sole, the souvenir print, the bare shoulders at dinner, the all-linen outfit. None of them is too cold for October. In Rome or Naples, most of them would still be perfectly comfortable.
What they have in common is that they are all vacation. Each one says I am on holiday. And in Italy, October is the month you stop dressing like a visitor in your own town. The holidays are over, the children are back at school, work has begun again. The clothes follow the life, not the thermometer.
That is why nothing new has to be bought. The summer dress stays. The linen stays. What changes is the one thing beside it that says the holiday is over: a structured jacket, a leather shoe, a shoulder covered after dark. It is the same wardrobe with the souvenirs taken out.
It works especially well in Sarasota, where October will not give us a cold morning to help. You can't wait for the weather here. You can decide the vacation is over. We made the same point about color in why an Italian woman wears white long after Labor Day: in Italy, the rules were never about the date.
So keep the dress. Lose the hat. Put a jacket over your shoulders at dinner. You will look like you live somewhere, and not like you are passing through. The dresses that make the switch are in the dresses.
She travels to Italy each season to hand-select the boutique's collection.
Keep reading
Italians Are Packing Away Summer. One Shelf Stays Out.
What an Italian Woman Wears From the Sand to the Table
