Here's How to Wear Hemp This Summer

Linen is the official fabric of summer. No debate from me. It should be. But like all good things, it has its limits. Last weekend, I attended a friend’s outdoor wedding, 92 degrees with a heat index of 99. We sat in rows and melted and watched the groomsmen in full tuxes valiantly try not to pass out. Us guests were swaddled in linen. Even so, I saw the slow, inexorable march of sweat start, first with a trickle and then a flood, until every man in attendance looked like they had showered in their dress shirts.

I was no exception. Despite wearing a great, 100 percent linen suit, I also became a puddle of salt water. And my poor suit is now rumpled to the extreme, far past sprezzatura and leaning towards an absent-minded professor. It’ll bounce back with some TLC, but that’s linen's issue. It's all good until it’s not. Like the titular alchemist tells the young protagonist in Paulo Coehelio’s The Alchemist, “Camels are traitorous: they walk thousands of paces and never seem to tire. Then suddenly, they kneel and die. But horses tire bit by bit. You always know how much you can ask of them, and when it is that they are about to die.”

Sartorially speaking, linen is a camel. Hemp is a horse.

I’m not actually here to blaspheme linen or offer a hot take. Rather, I want to offer a suggestion. Get your summer weight clothes in a blend that has something sturdier, something heartier, something homegrown. Hemp-cotton blends can't quite match linen's breeziness, but it's almost as cool, less wrinkle prone, and the hemp cuts down on cotton's moisture retention.

When you think of cashmere, what comes to mind? Probably Mongolian goats on alpine steppes, villas in the Alps. Merino? Pastoral scenes of content New Zealand sheep and the best pair of socks that you own. Linen? Verdant flax fields and unstructured Neapolitan suits under the Italian sun.

Now try hemp. What'd you get? Drug rugs decorating somebody's tent at Burning Man. Maybe a pair of Patagonia overalls. Hemp does derive from the Cannabis plant, an association that’s plagued it for the modern era. But you're not stuffing a bowl with this stuff. The plants are technically the same, but the other stuff has been bred to be so THC heavy it makes you forget who you are. Regular old hemp comes from the stuff with negligible levels of THC, but that's still set it back a few hundred years in American textile cultivation.

Funny thing is, Americans had no problem with that. In 1619, Virginia (then a commonwealth) passed legislation that every farmer needed to grow it. It was used to produce ropes, sails, clothing and continued to produce it en masse basically until the Great Depression, when a fear of cannabis swept the nation and hemp was legislated away. Ever seen Reefer Madness? While cannabis has slowly been legalized across states, hemp has lost much of its countercultural shock value and bounced back a bit in production.

Making clothes takes a lot of water. From both a crop and a manufacturing process. Cotton is a particularly thirsty crop. Brands take steps to mitigate the environmental impact, like the admirable Imogene + Wille cotton project. But there’s no getting around how much water it takes to grow cotton. Hemp could be a fix.

The list of botanical benefits feels almost like snake oil, but they’re true. Hemp requires relatively low levels of water to grow, it doesn’t require pesticides, and it (kinda unbelievably) is shown to absorb toxic metals and returns nutrients to the soil through a process called phytoremediation.

The benefits don’t stop when you harvest it and turn it into clothes. Hemp is a hollow fiber and breathable, temperature-regulating, and naturally moisture-wicking. It's everything that you need for summer. When blended with cotton, it makes clothes a little more breathable and reduces the water to t-shirt conversion chart.

Like linen, I think hemp looks best in an undyed natural or an earthy, granola-leaning tone. Something you could dip into a vat in your backyard if you stomped enough berries in a big wooden tub to make a dye. And the key to a summer fit is to look for a loose, drapey cut. Something that creates enough air pockets to allow for that natural airflow and a little evaporation

With its reputation for sustainability, it's no surprise that outdoor brands make frequent use of the fabric. Patagonia has a whole workwear line made from hemp and has a few dad at a barbecue/river raft guide leaning short-sleeved shirts in the mix. But for my money, the 6-inch hemp shorts are where it’s at. I can’t promise you that you’ll look like a young Yvon Choinard mountaineering in shorts and glacier goggles, but you can feel like him. While we’re on pants, cool kid climbing brand Gramicci makes very good climbing pants and climbing shorts in a hemp blend. Swedish purveyor of small bags and big fox vibes Fjallraven has a great hemp shirt in a limited edition stripe. I canoed in it and I’ll canoe in it again. And if you’re looking for shirts that’ll read more Greek Isles catamaran than Grand Canyon float, Royal Robbins makes a shirt that would work for both.

Surf brands aren’t far behind in the sustainability arms race. Patagonia technically counts as both and can double-dip here with its classic baggies in a hemp blend. Outerknown has historically carried more hemp than what’s in its current line, but you can still score this lived-in feeling sweatshirt. Marine Layer has a sharp hemp blazer that you could wear to a beach wedding. And British surf brand Finisterre has these hemp-blend fatigue pants.

American heritage brands have tapped into hemp's historical appeal and dependable construction. Buck Mason makes a great tee that uses a hemp cotton blend. Same with American Giant. Flint and Tinder has a hemp camp collar that you actually will want to wear to a backyard barbecue. Todd Snyder has this sumptuous, ’70s-inspired hemp/silk (!) blend cardigan. It’s pricey, but imagine how good it feels slung casually over a tank.

But if we’re talking about getting the most out of hemp, why blend it at all? These days, 100 percent hemp clothing is as much for fashion guys as it is for white dude with nasty dreadlocks. The clearest case of fashionable hemp is Evan Kinori, a little San Francisco-based slow fashion label making clothes out of natural fibers and weird organic dyes. There's hemp cut into a lot of Kinori's stuff, but the permanent collection has an undyed hemp canvas that's absolutely superb. If that's out of the price range, Jungmaven might be your gold standard. The brand's entire ethos revolves around making good clothes in stylish cuts from organic hemp. The styling leans New Age, but you anybody can make them work in real life. They’re genuinely great clothes, cut from a breathable fabric and dyed in deep tones that should cost double what they charge.

And yes, Jungmaven makes some good tie-dye. Some things, at the end of the day, just go together.