In some Neapolitan travel guides, you’ll find warnings to “not go down small, dark alleyways, especially in the Spanish Quarters.” It’s not bad advice, although often overstated. The Spanish Quarters — known as Quartieri Spagnoli to Italians — is a low-income neighborhood that suffers from high unemployment and a strong influence of Camorra, one of Italy’s oldest crime syndicates. It’s also a city planner’s nightmare, not because of the crime or poverty, but the disarray. The cobblestone streets are tight and narrow, and they’re flanked by peach-colored buildings covered in grime and multiple layers of half-peeled, wheat-pasted fliers. Fresh laundry commonly hangs overhead from the network of clotheslines that crisscrosses between buildings, waving like raggedy banners over the swarms of people below. On warm afternoons, screaming children and roaring Vespas zip alongside each other. Buildings stretch upwards forever, and for some reason, you always have to climb up five flights of stairs to reach the first floor.  

The mess that is the Spanish Quarters is part of a larger character that fills every Neapolitan district. It’s not uncommon to find residences next to businesses, sometimes homes located above storefronts or even the two mixed together into the same spaces. Some of the world’s best tailors are located here, as is Mario Talarico, one of the few remaining artisans for handmade umbrellas. And just a stone’s throw away is the affluent, waterfront district Chiaia, which has designer shops, seafood restaurants, and upscale bars. This is Naples: one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods is a short walk from a Prada boutique and Rubinaicci’s flagship, and yet everything coexists in harmony. It’s an equilibrium that has existed since forever. Even in the 1860s, Mark Twain wrote about Naples’ unmatched tempo in his travel book The Innocents Abroad:

The streets are wide enough for one wagon, and how they do swarm with people! It is Broadway repeated in every street, in every court, in every alley! Such masses, such throngs, such multitudes of hurrying, bustling, struggling humanity! We never saw the like of it, hardly even in New York. There are seldom any sidewalks, and when there are, they are not often wide enough to pass a man without caroming him. So everybody walks in the street – and where the street is wide enough, carriages are forever dashing along. Why a thousand people are not run over and crippled every day is a mystery no man can solve.

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It’s easy to get down on summer clothes. They don’t have the natural appeal of fall and winter wardrobes – there are no plush cashmere knits or prickly tweeds to draw you in, and there are few opportunities to layer. Over the years, however, I’ve come to appreciate how the changing of wardrobes helps mark the passing of time. Summer allows us to wear camp collar shirts, soft suede loafers, and airy materials, such as Tencel and linen. It’s also a good time to reintroduce ourselves to cheerier colors: warm peach, French blue, and sunflower yellow. If you’re looking for ideas on what to wear this season, here are ten things I’m particularly excited about. 

Bold Striped Shirts

White shirts are an all-time classic. During the Middle Ages, being able to wear a fresh linen shirt every day suggested you had wealth and status. White shirts were considered underwear, the first layer against the skin, and were easily soiled during a time of limited hygiene practices. Blue shirts, on the other hand, came much later as part of the uniform of laborers, sailors, and even prisoners.

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When UC Berkeley professor David Eisenbud visited the University of Tokyo some years ago, one of the Japanese professors told him they have better chalk than their American counterparts. “Oh go on, chalk is chalk,” Eisenbud said incredulously. As it turns out, chalk isn’t just chalk. Many of the brightest mathematicians on the planet believe that Hagoromo Fulltouch is mystical in some way. They say it can’t break. They say it glows on the board. They say it inspires and invigors, while also leaving a cleaner, smoother, and more elegant line. “The legend is that it’s impossible to write a false theorem with this chalk,” says Eisenbud, now a convert.

At first, Hagoromo Fulltouch was only available in Japan, which meant if you wanted a stick, you had to proxy it like streetwear. That was until an Amazon distributor started selling Fulltouch to American professors, which is how the chalk wound up in so many U.S. math departments. Five years ago, however, Hagoromo president Takayasu Watanabe announced the company would be halting production in February of 2015, and stop sales altogether the following month. American mathematicians went crazy. They bought, hoarded, and stockpiled as much of the stuff as they could. Eisenbud estimates he has a ten-year supply at home.

Soon after the company shuttered, a secondary market emerged. “I didn’t want to become a chalk dealer,” laughs Max Lieblich, a math professor at the University of Washington. “But I did like the idea that I could be the ‘first stick is free’ chalk dealer in my department.” Those who stockpiled the chalk sold sticks to their chalk-less colleagues, presumably at hiked up prices, much like rare and coveted Nikes. But the market came crashing down a year later when a South Korean company bought rights to the formula and started reproducing the “Rolls Royce of chalk” faithfully. Today, you buy Hagoromo Fulltouch in white and a variety of colors on Amazon.

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A few years ago, inspired by a photo of Bruce Boyer and an old Mister Crew post, I bought my first hat. It was Lock & Company’s Rambler, a soft trilby that can be rolled up and subsequently stuffed into a pocket. The style is a little more modern and casual than traditional headwear, but upon receiving it, I wasn’t sure how it should be worn. Should it be tilted forward or back? To the side? Can I wear it without looking like a neckbeard? None of the online guides I found helped. No matter what I did, putting this foreign object on my head felt like I was wearing a neon-sign that invited ridicule.

Over the years, I’ve occasionally worn the hat out of necessity: when I’m running out the door and don’t have time to style my hair, or when the Teflon-treated, water-resistant wool promises to give protection from the rain. Eventually, I grew used to it. I can’t say I wear it as well as Bruce, but it no longer feels awkward or unusual. It is, simply, my hat.

Social psychologists call this the spotlight effect, which is our tendency to overestimate how much other people notice our actions or appearance. This peculiar anxiety is captured in the single most common question guys ask when they’re starting to build a better wardrobe: “how can I dress well without standing out?” Whether you’re in Rick Owens or Rubinacci, techwear or tailoring, there’s no way to wear anything exciting nowadays without, in some way, looking different from others. Among men who wear sport coats, no experience unites like having to hear someone ask: “why are you so dressed up?” (Tip: tell them you’re going to see your parole officer for a murder conviction. They’ll never ask you again).

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In The New York Times last month, writer Megan Nolan asked the simple question: why do we all have to be beautiful? As a young girl growing up in Ireland, Nolan wanted to be beautiful so badly, she could taste it (“it tasted like blood”). She didn’t want to be cute or pretty. She didn’t want to be more desirable to men. She wanted to be beautiful because it’s harder to make beautiful people look foolish. Their lives are always well-ordered and they never feel embarrassed. And like all teens, Nolan often felt embarrassed.

Nolan’s hard, painful desire to look beautiful has stayed with her most of her life, but she asks at the end of her essay whether today’s inclusive message of beauty — where we’re told everyone is, in fact, beautiful — does more harm than good. “I tried to love myself as I got older, tried to look with clear eyes at my physical flaws and not just accept but admire them. I tried to believe that, actually, I was beautiful, because everyone was, not just the chosen few,” she writes. “I tried forcing myself to concede this, through a fake smile and gritted teeth. I’ve said it aloud, as advised by body-confidence self-help gurus, while looking at myself naked. It’s always felt absurd. […] Wouldn’t it be freeing to admit that most people are not beautiful? What if we stopped prioritizing pleasing aesthetics above so much else? I wonder what it would be like to grow up in a world where being beautiful is not seen as a necessity, but instead a nice thing some people are born with and some people aren’t, like a talent for swimming, or playing the piano. Everyone is beautiful, we’re told. But why should we have to be?”

Men don’t face nearly the same pressures as women to look attractive. We have other ways of climbing up the social ladder — humor, wealth, and even a reputation for violence. This masculine advantage is well-captured in Biggie’s “One More Chance,” where he raps: “Heartthrob never, black and ugly as ever/ However, I stay Coogi down to the socks/ Rings and watch filled with rocks/ And my jam knocks.” As Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in The Atlantic, the word “however” has never been used to greater effect. “There was no ‘however’ for a girl deemed ‘black and ugly,” he writes. “There were no female analogues to Biggie. ‘However’ was a bright line dividing the limited social rights of women from the relatively expansive social rights of men.”

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