The Riviera is the only destination in this series that asks for a proper beach day and a proper night out, and expects you to walk between them. St Tropez and Cap d'Antibes in early September are still hot with extraordinary light, so the daytime palette can be sun bleached and striped and cost very little. The evening is where it changes: town at night is dressed, and silk, metallic and a sculptural sunglass are the register. The compromise that makes the weekend work is a flat or very low sandal in both looks, because the old town is stone and the walk back from dinner is longer than it looks on a map. Build the day out of cotton and raffia, put the budget into a gold sandal and a metallic clutch, and repeat those two every night. Everything below was in stock this week with fast US delivery. One more thing on timing. The Riviera stays busy right through September and the good beach clubs need booking, so treat the packing list as the easy part of the planning rather than the last minute part.

A floral print linen dress carries the beach club lunch straight through to sunset drinks, which is most of the daylight problem solved in one piece. Under it, a one shoulder cut-out swimsuit in brown and cream, which is more interesting than a black one piece and costs less than most. The hat is raffia with a drawstring sweatband, and that detail is the whole point, since it adjusts and therefore stays on. For the bag, a small raffia basket with a cross body strap keeps your hands free on a boat and at a bar. Shoes stay flat and cheap during the day: a red leather thong is sixty five dollars and gives the neutral linen one deliberate flash of colour. Round it out with a fringed cotton sarong that doubles as your towel, and a sculptural shield sunglass, which was down to one unit when we checked. A note on the sarong, since it is doing double duty here: an organic cotton one dries far faster than silk and can genuinely replace the towel a beach club charges you for.

Two of the pieces here are luxuries and we will name them. The striped canvas tote at three thousand one hundred and fifty dollars is a wonderful object and a completely unnecessary one for a long weekend, and a cheap raffia tote will hold the same towel. The pleated silk dress is the better indulgence, because it is the only piece in this edit that could not be substituted with something plainer without losing the point. Where we would actually spend is the flat gold sandal and the ruched metallic clutch, which together come to six hundred dollars and will carry every evening of the weekend and most of next summer. Skip the extra linen shirt if you are already bringing one. If you take one thing away, buy gold flat sandals. On the Riviera they read as dressed, and they walk home. We would also leave the second pair of sunglasses at home. One good sculptural frame is the accessory that makes the whole look specific to this coast, and a spare just gets lost on a boat.