The quintessential male summer ensemble

Men love to dress up, but unlike their female counterparts, they’re often put under a lot of pressure to keep it subtle, underplayed and proactively masculine — so what does one do when summer approaches and all that’s on your mind is keeping it really cool?

We paired up with model Karan Rao, quite sartorially sound himself, to find out what we could showcase as a quintessential male summer ensemble.

Bangalore’s not your atypical summer-city, but the heat does turn up quite a bit here too, these days. Karan decided to rummage around his own wardrobe to come up with an ensemble that was simple, clean, easy to manage and still wonderfully stylish — something that he calls ‘Brand Karan’.

Karan believes that summer is in every essence of the word, completely about chilling out and if there ever was a city that allowed you to just lounge around and relax while indulging in the heat, it’s out very own Bangalore.

So after much arguing, agreeing, deducing and including, we concluded that this summery look shall be carried out sans make-up. We did have to slather up Karan in some good sunscreen, but that’s about it — and we think we chose wisely.

Karan Rao defies every stereotype there is about a male model. He’s sweet, down-to-earth, extremely academic and hopes for a future in filmmaking. A graduate in filmmaking from the University of Bristol in the UK, Karan co-owns a fledgling production company based out of Bangalore (quite cutely called Goldchase) and hopes to see himself as a successful filmmaker in the years to come.

Tress pass
Long locks are in for guys and we’ve been screaming sore about how wonderful this look really is, for months now. Karan joined the brigade of the-men-with-manageable-long-hair a few months ago and bid farewell to his days of spiked and gelled hair. We couldn’t have been more pleased and he agrees with us, enthusing about how mature the look has made him feel. Karan decided to keep the au naturale look going and decided to treat his hair with just one application of daily-use hair serum before the shoot. Men do have it easy in Bangalore — shampoo, condition, serum and voila! — you’re suddenly sporting the hottest hair trend in town.

Li’l add-ons
A well-dressed man’s ensemble is never really complete without the right accessories and be it any season of the year, complementing your ensemble with the right add-ons goes a long way in describing how stylish you really are. Karan chose to go quite risqué with a studded belt from Diesel, picked up in Dubai, that off-set and surprisingly, added a lot of character to the green trousers. He prettied up his left wrist with a gadget-y and silver timepiece by Fossil (a gift) and finally rounded-up the look with a pair of shades from Carrera, picked up in Mumbai. His style mantra when it comes to accessories like his dressing sense is, keeping it simple and pretty!

Dress me up
Karan, as mentioned, styled himself and we think he did a pretty good job with his summer ensemble. The ensemble featured a striped white cotton shirt in shades of white that he picked up in Zara, Bangalore. The breezy summer cotton shirt was accentuated with Chinese collars and cuffed sleeves that centred the summery look. To this, was added, a Topshop narrow-fit cotton trouser from the UK, stressed and wonderfully green. The pant was rolled up to give it a casual look that worked brilliantly well with the ensemble. Karan rounded off the look with a pair of Greek strapped sandals in brown, sourced from Asos in Paris. Quite simply the pièce de résistance, we love how the sandals did pure magic to Karan’s 6’2” frame.