I love these light, pale blue chinos. I have this color in both in shorts and pants. Usually I wear a standard white OCBD with these. It is the simplest and clearest choice. Yet, sometimes it is nice to wander a bit into more playful territory. This is especially the case as we are getting toward the end of summer. It won't be too long until we put our summer chinos, madras and seersucker away. It won't be too long until we are wearing dark, earthy cords. Until then, we may as well fully embrace some summer-y pairings.
I love this outfit because of the softness of hue. The yellow university stripe is dusty and gentle. Pairing the warm yellow softness with the cool light blue creates a gentle, dreamy like pairing. I almost went with a cream linen sport coat instead of the navy blazer, however the cream was too close to the pale yellow. It looked odd, off. The navy blazer, as always, works perfect. The dark, heaviness of it acts like an anchor, off-setting the dreamy, gentle pale blue and yellow.
With an outfit like this it is hard to bring a tie along. There is already a lot of energy, a lot of input, even though the colors are so gentle. To try to bring a tie in would be difficult. There are options that could possibly work but considering how hard it would be to pull off in a non-clownish way, it essentially isn't worth it. Even in the event that you could thread the needle just right with a tie, it would most likely only detract from the beautiful simple dream-like color combination of the pants and shirt.
Dreamy, gentle, simple, summer.