It’s a solid look for the season, but perilously easy to get wrong. Here’s a guide to learning your lines.

When it comes to adding stripes to your summer wardrobe, where do you draw the line? Vertical? Horizontal? Both? How many colours are too many? That’s before we’ve even started on width. Here’s the answer: whatever you do, go bold. Whether on shirts, tees, jackets or ties, it’s the smart move for a season when colour and pattern come into their own. Scroll down for advice on how to put the “ripe” into stripe.

So, Ye Olde Men’s Style Almanac stipulates that you should never mix your stripes, much less combine the vertical and the horizontal in the same outfit. Well, Ye Almanac can henceforth be consigned to Ye Dumpster, as this gentleman sets the bar both high and wide. By choosing stripes of alternating width (and teaming the thicker, more sober hues of the sweater with a blazer), he ensures that the only clash we’re contemplating here is a creative one. And extra kudos for highlighting the bolder tone of the shirt with the stealth-bling of man-jewellery. If you’re heading to a festival this summer, this outfit says, “I’m with the band.”

Nothing says, “I’ve arrived in Portofino and I’m off for a spaghetti alla vongole and a negroni” like a nautical-stripe shirt. This gentleman ups the ante to crow’s-nest heights by swapping the classic Breton tee for a very on-trend camp-collar shirt. The prominent, frame-accentuating striations at midriff level will give the impression that you’ve been splicing the main brace (or just hitting the gym hard) rather than getting too soft on the sun deck. Couple with other essential offshore accessories – try a straw hat, maybe a pair of Wayfarers or a handy pouch, as deployed here – and, style-wise at least, you’ll stay on a more-than-even keel.

With the election of Mr Emmanuel Macron in France, an ascendant style icon – it’s hard to imagine, say, Mr Donald J Trump rocking a fitted gilet and white scarf, as a bicycling Mr Macron did recently – the tricolour look is a fittingly celebratory one for the season. This gentleman goes a vivid step beyond the Gallic blue, white and red, but still manages to combine liberté (in the graphic punch of the shirt’s navy, white and orangey red bands), égalité (in the way that the subdued trousers complement the shirt’s exuberance) and fraternité (with the shirt melding the vertical and horizontal to congenial effect).

Yes, it’s a striped suit, but it’s less The Wolf Of Wall Street and more the flâneur of the French Quarter. As tailoring gets lighter and paler in summer – with cotton or linen, or mixes thereof – pattern can come to the fore, as it certainly does with these ribbons of red, green and mustard. But the relaxed fit and urbane elan of the seersucker – not to mention the gentleman’s stylistic emulation of a member of the haute-jazz fraternity – means we’re dealing with the sartorial equivalent of Mr Miles Davis’ Birth Of The Cool: poised, sophisticated and very much dancing to its own finger-clicking tune.

The polo shirt. The most adaptable item in a summer wardrobe. Versatile enough to take you from a game of, well, polo, to an alfresco barbecue or a restaurant terrace, and ubiquitous enough to have acquired the status of “classic basic” alongside skinny jeans and minimal white trainers. How to stand out in the season of peak polo? Answer: ramp up the colour, and with stripes. This gentleman accentuates his by going against the prevailing grain – slightly oversized, buttoning to the neck – and deploying the kind of inside-out, psyched-preppy look that makes a mockery of the old saw that one should only wear light shirts with dark stripes.

The artist Mr Paul Klee, painter of whimsical figures and landscapes, once described his technique as “taking a line for a walk”. This gentleman emulates that, with the jagged pattern of his shirt disrupting the even bands of his classic T-shirt to winning diagrammatic effect. The trick to getting a kick in the motif? Make sure the designs play off each other (wider and narrower, straighter and curvier), keep the colours complementary, and don’t overdo it. Any more trigonometric business here and we tip over from strong visual impact to old-school TV interference.

If the knitted tie is the spritz of neckwear – more than acceptable year-round, but coming into its own during summer – then the striped knitted tie is the semifreddo Bellini: peachy, mellow and providing just the right amount of fizz. Look at the way this gentleman deploys his black-and-white number to add graphic verve and vintage-inspired flair to an outfit that muddies the formal-informal waters. And with a raincoat to protect you from the inevitable summer showers, you’ve got a look that will take you seamlessly from board meeting to private view to – where else? – cocktail lounge.

The men featured in this story are not associated with and do not endorse MR PORTER or the products shown