How to Wear a Brown Suit: Mai Atafo’s Paris Look Explains Everything

Mai Atafo posing on a Paris street wearing a tobacco brown suit with one hand in his trouser pocket, styled with a white shirt, dimpled burgundy tie, dark aviator sunglasses, and oxblood penny loafers.

Have you seen Mai Atafo lately? The fashion designer is taking over the streets of Paris, and he is doing it in style. The founder of ATAFO stepped out in a tobacco-brown double-breasted suit that is making a very convincing case for why brown deserves far more attention in your wardrobe than it currently gets.

The suit itself is a two-piece double-breasted cut with wide peak lapels, classic button placement, double flapped pockets including a ticket pocket, and a subtle shoulder structure that gives the jacket a clean, confident shape. The trousers are high-waisted and wide-leg, tailored with a full-cut drape, single pleats, and thick turn-up cuffs that rest cleanly over his footwear. It is the proportions that make this look work. Everything is generous and unhurried, and the warm tobacco-brown pulls it all together in a way that feels both classic and completely current.

Mai Atafo sitting on a street bollard in Paris wearing a tobacco brown double-breasted suit, crisp white dress shirt, patterned burgundy silk tie, ribbed burgundy socks, dark oxblood leather penny loafers, and aviator sunglasses.

Now, if you have ever wondered what goes with a brown suit, Mai Atafo has just answered that question for you. Underneath the jacket is a white dress shirt with a sharp pointed collar and double cuffs showing just past the jacket sleeves. That combination, brown suit and white shirt, is one of the cleanest pairings in menswear, and it works precisely because the contrast is strong without being aggressive. The white lifts the warmth of the tobacco brown rather than competing with it. If you are building your first brown suit outfit, start there.

Showcasing ideal colour combinations for a brown suit, ATAFO founder Mai Atafo wears high-waisted pleated trousers with a sharp white dress shirt, demonstrating how strong contrast lifts warm brown menswear tailoring.

The tie is where the look gets interesting. He has chosen a deep burgundy silk tie with a geometric gold motif pattern, tied in a neat knot with a subtle dimple. Burgundy and brown are one of those colour pairings that feel instinctively right, both sitting in the same warm family of tones without being identical. If you are wondering what colour tie goes with a brown suit, burgundy, deep wine, or even a rich forest green are all strong choices. What you want to avoid is anything too cool in tone, navy or silver, for instance, which will fight the warmth of the brown rather than complement it.

On his feet, dark burgundy oxblood leather penny loafers paired with ribbed socks in the same shade as the tie. Matching your socks to your tie is one of those small styling details that most people never think about and that immediately elevates a look when done well. The oxblood loafers also reinforce the burgundy thread running through the outfit without being heavy-handed about it.

Mai Atafo standing in front of an ornate black door in Paris wearing a fully buttoned tobacco brown double-breasted suit with wide peak lapels, double flapped pockets, a burgundy tie, and dark oxblood loafers.

The oversized thick dark-rimmed aviator sunglasses bring an urban, vintage-inflected quality to what is otherwise a very classic look, and that tension between the traditional tailoring and the modern eyewear is exactly where the whole thing comes alive. It is also worth noting where he is wearing this. Paris. The streets. Not a wedding, not a boardroom. A brown suit worn this way is not just an occasion outfit, it is an everyday statement, and Mai Atafo is making that point very clearly.

So to answer every question the internet has about brown suits: yes, you can wear one to a meeting. Yes, you can wear it to a wedding. Yes, you can wear it on a Saturday afternoon in Paris and look like you have nowhere else to be and no reason to rush. Pair it with white, add something burgundy, and let the proportions do the work.

Mai Atafo posing on a Paris street wearing a tobacco brown suit with one hand in his trouser pocket, styled with a white shirt, dimpled burgundy tie, dark aviator sunglasses, and oxblood penny loafers.