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If you feel like adding a little strength to the stripe in your shirt this summer, the best option is a wider, butcher's stripe.
I particularly recommend a strong stripe like this if you tend to wear your shirt open-necked. There is something a little sad about a shirt that would look so much better with a partnered tie and yet is denied it. Especially if the lack of decoration around the neck is not made up by colour and pattern in a pocket handkerchief.
Not that the butcher's stripe cannot be worn with a tie. As long as it is plain in colour, or the pattern is sufficiently different, that's fine (as in the image where the spots are sufficiently different and an almost equal scale).
You'd struggle to have a pattern with a bigger scale than the shirt, and even if you did (a widely spaced club stripe, for example) the effect may be for the combination to overwhelm everything you included.
By the way, it is consistently surprising the assumptions that Americans make about the traditions of Jermyn Street and how they affect men today. In Esquire's recent Big Black Book, for example, it says: Bolder stripes are rarely seen in the American workplace. In London's financial district, it's the polar opposite. The classic City trader's shirt might carry half-inch stripes of pink, red, yellow or sky blue.
I'm not sure the writer has ever worked in the London's financial district. What he describes may have been the tradition (and how Jermyn Street got started) but it is hardly the case today. Yes, Americans still wear a lot more plain white shirts than us. But there is still a depressing number of Englishmen working in the City that express their personality in their ties and little else.
By the way, because I know you want to know, the butcher's stripe is so named because it recollects the size of stripe traditionally worn on a butcher's apron.
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The generalisation that the English experiment with their shirts and the Italians with their jackets broadly holds, particularly in business wear. The Italians are more willing to experiment with suit cloth at every occasion.
The combination works well because a blue shirt suits most people more than white, and it fades more into the background; because a dark tie fades more into the background than a pale tie; and because the dark blue tie is the most similar in tone and harmonious combination with a blue shirt without being too similar and evoking tone on tone.
But this is analysing the obvious. It works as the plainest and yet most sophisticated of supports to an otherwise daring suit pattern or indeed odd jacket. It equally supports an adventurous pocket-handkerchief, gloves, hat or jacket. When trying to balance an outfit, the Italian would much rather tone down a tie than go without one.
Four examples are displayed here. The first is possibly the most extreme. The high contrast, double-breasted jacket stands out, but is supported effectively by an Italian Background and dark trousers. It even makes it possible to add a pointed handkerchief without appearing over the top.
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