5 style mistakes to avoid if you are a tourist in Italy After all, you don't always need to be recognized.

When traveling, comfort is key — especially when visiting Italy with its sweltering summers, steep cities, and the endless walking that most tourist itineraries require. Tourists, who have been arriving in droves for decades now, often face a truly difficult dilemma: how to combine the comfort needed for long treks with the elegance demanded by the locations they’re visiting? Often, the problem is solved by ignoring it altogether: after all, their fashion sense has become proverbial, and German tourists in socks and sandals have become such a cliché that the combo has now come full circle — almost becoming trendy. Emphasis on “almost.” Still, no matter how hard they try, foreign visitors are usually easy to spot from ten kilometers away, often due to their outfits, swinging wildly between overdressing and underdressing. It's no wonder social media is overflowing with guides on “how to dress in Italy,” most of which (unsuccessfully) urge tourists not to wear flimsy beach flip-flops and micro-shorts when entering churches. But the real reason for all this advice is that tourists have become a permanent part of the Italian landscape, and with their often unfortunate outfit choices, they risk spoiling it.

So here are five style mistakes not to make if you're visiting Italy.

1. The “Riviera Look”

We made up the name ourselves, but it describes a very specific type of tourist in Italy: a floral dress that usually falls just past the knees (in America it’s even called a “travel dress”), oversized movie-star sunglasses, and a wide-brimmed straw hat of wildly unrealistic proportions. A look that is not necessarily inappropriate or tasteless, but which has now become a cliché that defies all understanding. The thing is, this look is like the fake Mid-Atlantic accent in old Hollywood movies: no one wears it abroad, no Italian woman would wear it for a day out, and yet it seems to exist solely for those visiting Italy, as if by some unspoken social contract. Luckily, no one lives in a Giuseppe Tornatore film, so even the most romantic tourists from abroad are free to dress like they would on any normal day — no need to cosplay as Gina Lollobrigida in her golden years.

2. The Old Money Dandy

Often a guy from northern Europe — Scandinavian, Hanseatic, or maybe British or American — the Old Money Dandy may or may not come from a wealthy family, but one thing is certain: he’s ditched his boyish clothes and now wants to dress like a man. How? With a white, blue, or blue-and-white striped shirt, semi-elastic linen trousers in such neutral tones they defy description, and more often than not, a curtain-cut hairstyle revived from the '90s, usually slicked back to the point of looking like a seagull caught in an oil spill. If he’s a Briatore and nightlife fan, he’ll wear smoky sunglasses well past midnight. When visiting Southern Italy, he’ll fall in love with being asked to wave a napkin in the air at a dinner show while shouting "olé, olé" — probably the most rebellious moment of his life. Naturally, he doesn’t mind restaurants that serve truffle pizza, steak, lobster, and avocado hummus all on the same menu, as long as there’s protein. After all, the dandy is, deep down, a gym bro with generational wealth. Other items of the look: espadrilles or white sneakers that grandpa the banker from Lübeck (who built the family fortune in the early 1900s) wouldn’t have approved of; a white shell or bead necklace to signal exotic travels; thin metallic sunglasses. The color palette is always limited to two or three shades of lifeless beige. Also key: the sultry "man of mystery" look in every photo. The secret to pulling this look off? A complete lack of personality.

3. The Sloppy Dad

Mostly men with at least two children under the age of nine, dressed just like him. His outfit is proof of his moral fiber: he’s a man of integrity, solid and serious, too serious to ever care about trivialities like dressing appropriately to go to a restaurant or visit the architectural masterpieces of the world. Like children, he must be comfortable at all costs and in all contexts. His concept of public decorum stops at not being naked — a puritan cult of bare minimums where any concession to aesthetics is corruption, not etiquette. Iconic look: solid color t-shirts in shades ranging from dove gray to pale blue, the inevitable technical shorts, sneakers fit for climbing the Dolomites, and of course, "fast" sunglasses — often the only sign of aesthetic intention beyond pure functionality. Add a baseball cap (or worse, a straw fedora), and the most unwatchable backpacks or fanny packs ever designed. What stands out here is not the practical (and let’s admit, unflattering) look, but its utter unchangeability: it’s because of men like this that La Scala had to issue an explicit dress code, and why you can’t go to a restaurant these days without seeing some well-meaning dad dressed like he just left the gym — without even showering.

4. The Dramatic Red Dress

At some point during the Tumblr Era, an unknown woman had herself photographed from behind in a long red dress with a dramatic backdrop — creating the greatest collective hypnosis experiment in recent memory. Ever since, whenever you see a woman in a long red dress in broad daylight anywhere in Italy, it’s almost guaranteed she’s a tourist. And while in Italy a long red dress is honestly a rare, if not bizarre, sight, it’s striking how deeply rooted this image is abroad. In ads and even in some aging movies, the image of a woman in red cutting through a crowd is almost a primal, if clichéd, symbol of vitality and passion. The archetype is so entrenched that even the iPhone emoji catalog includes a woman in red dancing. So many questions: do these visitors wear red at home, too? Are they truly passionate souls or just performatively romantic? Why does the idea of a red dress in a Mediterranean country hold such sway over the collective imagination? And why always the back-facing pose, in homage to that original, anonymous shot? One thing’s for sure: anyone donning “the dramatic red dress” has a heart that overflows and wants the world to know it. And in the end, they succeed — but at what cost?

5. The Linen Co-ord

An unintentional offspring of the Old Money wardrobe mentioned above, the linen co-ord isn’t worn just by tourists — it’s also beloved by many young Italian men who, even in the most forgotten backcountry towns, refuse to give up looking like they belong to the '60s jet set. Recently, though, the coordinated linen set has become a common sight in Italy’s tourist hotspots, worn as a sort of halfway point between uniform and pajamas, complete with basic white sneakers and sometimes even a little crossbody bag trying to be "fashion" — but never quite succeeding. Why is this look a mistake? Because it never communicates what the wearer thinks it does. In fact, it’s so childishly simple that it makes you feel like a diaper might be hiding somewhere underneath. Even worse if it’s paired with a not-so-practical men’s clutch bag. Rather than evoking a sophisticated poolside party during the economic boom, the linen co-ord mostly brings to mind the little outfits worn by toddlers aged one to three when they’re brought to summer weddings — hoping they’ll nap in the stroller for at least half the event.