Two Weeks in Europe. Three Shirts. One Carry-On.

Bellano → Impruneta → Bologna → Dublin → a castle in Kildare. Fourteen days, three climates, one carry-on — two Bruces and a Cassius, and not a single wash.

G'day — Jock here. In July, Peyton and I flew to Europe for two weeks, ending at a friend's wedding at Kilkea Castle in Ireland. I packed a tux for the wedding, because there are limits to what I'll ask of a knit shirt. Everything else I wore for a fortnight was three shirts in a carry-on: The Bruce in French Blue, The Bruce again in Olive Green, and The Cassius in Black.

Three shirts, fourteen days. I didn't wash them once. Not in a hotel sink, not anywhere. Hung them up at night, wore them again. That's the whole system.

Bellano, Lake Como — three nights

We started on the lake, in Bellano — quieter than Varenna across the water, and better for it. Como in July is kind weather: warm afternoons on the water, cool evenings once the sun drops behind the mountains.

The Bruce did the heavy lifting here. Boat tour across the lake in the French Blue — sun, spray, wind, the shirt none the wiser. A long lunch and a wine tasting in the Olive. And one of them on every single night for dinner, collar open or buttoned depending on the room. Same two shirts rotating through completely different jobs, and neither ever looked like it had already done the day shift.

Impruneta, Tuscany — three nights

Then south into the proper heat. Impruneta sits in the hills just below Florence, and in mid-July the middle of the day is a furnace — the kind of dry Tuscan heat that turns a cotton shirt into a wet towel by noon.

This is the leg people don't believe: wool, in that. But fine merino is what the sheep wear through Australian summers hotter than anything Tuscany can produce, and it works the same way on you — it moves moisture off your skin as vapour instead of soaking it up against you. The black Cassius took the hottest hours, and the honest report is: damp at two o'clock, dry by four, and — this is the part that matters for a bag with three shirts in it — fresh again by morning. Cotton doesn't come back like that. It just stays wet, then stays smelly.

Bologna — one night

One night, one shirt, no thinking. Bologna in July is warm and humid and mostly eaten indoors, at length. A Bruce went from the train to a long dinner under the porticoes without an outfit decision being made at any point. The best travel wardrobe is the one you stop noticing.

Dublin — three nights

Then we flew north and lost fifteen degrees. Dublin in July sits cool and grey where Tuscany was blazing — and this is the half of the merino story that surprises people who only know it as a summer fibre.

The same shirts that vented heat in Impruneta held warmth in Dublin. That's not marketing physics; it's the same crimped fibre trapping air when it's cold and releasing moisture when it's hot. The Bruce under a light jacket handled every cool evening on the walk back from the pub. Nothing else in the bag changed. Nothing needed to.

Kilkea Castle — the wedding

The fortnight ended at Kilkea Castle in Kildare, where I'll admit the merino stood down and the tux stood up. Some occasions call for a dinner jacket, and an 800-year-old castle wedding is one of them. But I did get a round of golf in at this legendary course, and that called for Sir W.

But it says something that across fourteen days, the tux was the only thing in the bag that only did one job.

The tally

Fourteen days. Two countries getting hotter, one getting colder. Two Bruces and a Cassius, rotating — a Bruce on every dinner, the Cassius through the worst of the heat — and zero washes. Not one. No checked bag, no ironing, no laundrette hunting, no third-day shirt shame.

That's the whole argument for merino, lived rather than told: the packing list gets shorter because the fibre does more jobs. Cotton needs a shirt per day and polyester needs a wash per wear. Merino needs neither, so the carry-on closes.

If you've got a trip like this coming — heat at one end, drizzle at the other, a nice dinner in the middle — my kit was two of The Bruce and one The Cassius. If you'd rather try all three shirts we make, The Starter Set gets you The Bruce, The George and The Cassius together for $35 less than buying them apart.

— Jock Merriman, Founder · 5th generation