What you see here is a newfangled invention. The beach dress – specifically designed to turn your swimsuit into an outfit you can wear to lunch – is a wardrobe category that didn’t really exist until about a decade ago. I mean, obviously, it was not unknown to wear your bikini as undies en route to the beach. But this was a DIY form of outfit-wrangling, a way of fudging the awkward transition from swimwear to actual clothes without resorting to changing underneath a towel. The vibe was lo-fi: a sarong, an oversized T-shirt, wriggling out of a wet one-piece to avoid a damp patch where you sit on your dress.
The new beach dress is not remotely lo-fi, no sir. It is, in fact, summer fashion’s most glamorous category. Walk on to any shopfloor and you will find a world bedazzled by dresses that have cocktail-hour detailing but are intended to be worn on a beach. The sunlounger is to this decade what the bar stool was to the 00s: the place to showcase your hottest looks.
What has changed? Our attitude to tanning has a lot to do with it. The idea of a beach cover-up made no sense, back when a deep all-over tan was the plan. When I was in my 20s, I didn’t always bother packing the top half of my bikini for holidays, sunbathing being a serious business and very much a scanty knicks-only affair. A beach cover-up? I would have been genuinely puzzled by the concept. Yes reader, I was an idiot.
But something else has changed, too. Going on holiday – which used to be a time when you disappeared off-radar to eat ice-cream, snooze and not wear any makeup – has become a Lifestyle Moment. Because of social media, but also the pandemic, which snatched travel from us for a year or two, making lots of people realise how much those two weeks mattered to them. Holidays have become a time to dress up. Lots of retailers have told me over the past few years that their customers will cut back on spending elsewhere, but prioritise buying new holiday pieces.
There are all kinds of ways to cover up on the beach. I will always love a kaftan. The sarong is having a comeback, if that’s your thing. An oversized cotton shirt looks chic with a baseball cap or a sunhat. There is even such a thing as “beach pyjamas”, although now that airline prices have pushed many of us into a hand luggage-only era, I’m sceptical that these will prove themselves worthy of the space they take up in your case, unless you wear them as bedtime pyjamas as well, which feels a little scuzzy to me, but you do you.
But the hero piece of this season is the main-character-energy beach dress. This is a dress that compliments your swimwear, rather than concealing it. It will be in an openwork crochet or loose-weave knit, so your bikini or one-piece is visible in the gaps; or it will be in a sheer lace or tissue-thin cheesecloth, so that what you are wearing beneath shows through. Either way, your swimwear serves both as a kind of petticoat, concealing your modesty, and an accessory, bringing the drama.
This is going to seem obvious, but at the risk of sounding like a broken record: you need to try this on. When you look at an image of an influencer in a crochet dress, what your eye sees is the body; but remember, you are buying the dress not the abs. What it looks like on some teenager, who is probably AI anyway, is neither here nor there.
That’s my main tip. Apart from that: sleeves can be more useful than you think – they help you feel dressed – but a shorter hemline is more practical than floor-length. A knit or a crinkled cheesecloth will pack well without needing to be ironed. White looks great over dark or colourful swimwear, but a dark dress is practical for when you sit on a grubby sea wall waiting for a taxi or whatever. How to accessorise? Sunnies, a book and an ice-cream. Some things never change.
Model: Teesta at Milk. Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Delilah Blakeney using Nars. Styling assistant: Sam Deaman. Dress, £39.50,Marks and Spencer. Bag, £420,Alemais. Sunglasses, £16,River Island. Necklace, £98,Astley Clarke. Earrings, £85,Edge of Ember