Catch the light

It has appeared in the collections of Dolce & Gabbana and Ungaro, Giorgio Armani and Givenchy, and most prominently this season, in those of Gucci and the arch-minimalist Jil Sander. The white suit, neutral in colour, is anything but in terms of flamboyance. On the one hand, you have the dress-to-impress showiness of F Scott Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby in his "white flannel suit, silver shirt and gold-coloured tie", and of Tony Manero pointing to the glitter ball in Saturday Night Fever. On the other, you have the 1930s colonialism of Graham Greene, the bohemian hedonism of Mick (and Bianca) Jagger or the anti-fashion purity of John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Why the white suit (and its easier-to-wear cousin, the pale suit) should be quite so divisive may come down to the ability of a man to carry it off. "It certainly requires a level of confidence to wear it," suggests Karl Matthews, a consultant for the Savile Row tailor Anderson and Sheppard. "There is this idea that the paler you go, the more casual a suit becomes. But the pale suit can actually look very stylish - it brings a touch of colour to the wardrobe. Pulling it off is a question of context though. A lot of our clients who order them travel a lot. You need the sunshine."

Certainly the white or pale suit is a high-maintenance option for anyone living in bustling urban centres, unless he has discovered the formula for the dirt-repelling cloth created in the Ealing Comedy The Man in the White Suit. Lee Douros, the menswear buyer for the online retailer my-wardrobe.com, also argues that, if not carefully put together, it can seem a touch casual for the office - indeed, the store sells pale suits only in cotton or linen to underscore that.

Foreign correspondents in tropical zones and maverick CIA types are often characterised by a somewhat battered white jacket. Ricardo Montalban's Mr Roarke and his assistant Tattoo, the elegant hosts in the 1970s TV series Fantasy Island, always wore white suits. The Man from Del Monte, the assessor of fruit in the long-running advertising campaign, was typically also a Man in White. James Bond, in each of his big-screen incarnations, has typically donned a pale suit too - it is almost a cinematic shorthand (along with the sudden appearance of bikini-clad women) informing the audience that the latest exotic location is a hot one.

But even under desert skies, escaping the connotations of the pale suit can be hard. Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman both wore white suits around the White House, but it will, one imagines, be some time before Barack Obama makes a public appearance in one. In a television age, Ajay Mirpuri, of the Geneva-based tailor Raj Mirpuri, notes how unforgiving a pale suit can be on any but the best-proportioned figure.

"It can show all the flaws a darker suit might hide," he says. "That is also why it is best to keep a pale suit simple. It doesn't need fancy linings or contrast buttonholes. It's already guaranteed that when you leave the room you will be missed." Indeed, both the point and the problem with the pale suit - in contrast to the uniform of the dark suit, which always speaks of the sober matters of work, court appearance or funeral, regardless of the occasion - is that it does make a memorable statement. That might be a missed opportunity.

"Men don't wear pale suits enough simply because they've grown so used to thinking of a suit as coming only in charcoal grey or navy," suggests Alessandro Sartori, a designer for Ermenegildo Zegna. "Sure, a dazzling white suit can make you very different in a way that might be unsettling. But the right shade of pale suit is still masculine - for this I'd suggest the more monochrome tones of stone, beige, light grey rather than pale pinks or yellows - and brings a freshness, an originality, especially with the right styling touches: a collarless shirt, for example, or shorter, narrower trousers worn without socks."

America's Southern gentleman archetype - big hat, goatee, pale suit and most definitely socks - may have all but died out. But it still provides the best template for wearing the all-white ensemble distinctively. Take, for example, Harland Sanders, Kentucky colonel and founder of KFC, or the Virginia-born author Tom Wolfe. Both found the white suit a powerful sartorial signature. Sanders did not actually start to wear his emblematic white suit and string tie until 1950, decades after the company had been founded, having discovered how well it suited public expectations of what he should look like.

Wolfe similarly discovered by accident just how memorable the white suit is. He first bought one to wear in the summer of 1962 but, finding the fabric too heavy for the weather, chose to wear it that winter instead. This, being contrary to expectations, got him noticed. He has jokingly called it, "a substitute for a personality", adding: "Of course, you have to have three to get through the day." But perhaps the white suit's most famous wearer was Mark Twain. He first wore one to a 1906 congressional hearing on copyright, so bucking convention that the reporters present decided his attire was the bigger national story. Twain's decision - to "every day of his life put on clean shirt and a full suit from head to toe made out of linen so white it hurt your eyes to look at it", as he wrote on one of his characters in Huckleberry Finn - he attributed to hygiene.

But then Twain often had his tongue firmly in his cheek. On another occasion he claimed his choice was born simply of the need to put some zest into his life. "I have found that when a man reaches the advanced age of 71 years, as I have, the continual sight of drab clothing is likely to have a depressing effect upon him," he announced. "Light-coloured clothing is more pleasing to the eye and enlivens the spirit." And perhaps he has a point.