Vacation Dresses, Swimwear, And Accessories

Vacation Dresses, Swimwear, And Accessories

Sixty-eight vacation dresses for the beach, the long lunch and the last dinner, from linen day dresses and loud resort prints to crochet and fringe for the evening. The swimwear, sandals and sunglasses for the same trip sit together at the end.

The dress is the outfit

Johanna Ortiz started in Cali in 2003 with a small resort collection built around swimwear, and two decades later her cotton dresses are still the first thing I reach for when a trip is booked. That is the logic of this edit now: the dress is the outfit. One good one covers the boat, the late lunch and the walk back, and it takes up less room in the case than a top, a skirt and a plan.

 

The first group is the plain workhorses. Merlette's voile dresses, Posse's broderie anglaise midi and the white SIR Klara maxi are all cotton or linen, which means they breathe in humidity and look better a little creased. Staud's Margi comes as a red cotton midi and a ruffled maxi, and Marrakshi Life's column dress is woven in the label's Marrakech atelier, where Randall Bachner has run a team of weavers on flatbed looms since 2013.

 

My test before anything goes in the case: hold it up to a window. If you can see your hand clearly through it, it needs a slip, and the slip is always the thing I forget.

 

What I would skip: any dress that only works with one specific pair of shoes. Flat sandals and one wedge should cover every dress on this page.

Vacation dresses collage: Akoia Swim, All That Remains, Andres Otalora, Cala de la Cruz, Posse, STAUD, Sea, St. Agni

Day dresses

Prints that do the talking

Lesleigh Jermanus launched Alémais in late 2020 and built it on prints drawn from her Lebanese heritage, which is why several of her dresses sit in this group without reading as the same dress twice. The Natalia linen mini and the Marion twill mini are the ones I would wear into town; the Mona hemp midi and the Paula belted linen midi are for long lunches.

 

Johanna Ortiz gets three: the Paraiso Agreste midi, the Salt Dreamer mini and the Inundada de Color mini, all cotton and all loud in the way a resort print should be. Stripes come from Marrakshi Life and Ilio, and the Zimmermann Lucky Picnic mini and the Alémais Neptune halter maxi stay from the original edit because they still earn the space.

 

A print packs better than a plain dress. It hides creases, sunscreen and the odd splash from the bar, which matters more on day five than it does in the fitting room.

 

What I would skip: a printed bag or scarf on top of a printed dress. Let the dress be the only pattern and keep the rest in tan, white or gold.

Prints, stripes and color

Lace, crochet and fringe for after dark

The evening dress on a trip has a different job from the one at home. It has to survive a sandy terrace, a breeze off the water and a taxi with no air conditioning, so the best ones here are textured rather than precious. Staud's Isola and Rio crochet dresses, All That Remains' Donna and the Akoia Swim asymmetric crochet midi all move with you and fold down to almost nothing.

 

Then there is fringe. Aje's Florentia raffia maxi swings when you walk, and Paris Georgia's fringe cotton maxi is quieter but does the same thing at the hem. Sea's Gracelyn and Hilda bring lace in pink and butter yellow, and Staud's Delfina organza maxi is the one I would save for the last night.

 

A quick test for holiday evening dresses: sit down in it. Crochet and lace that pull open when you sit look very different at a table than they do standing in a mirror.

 

What I would skip: anything that needs a strapless bra you have not packed. Check the straps before the color.

Evening dresses for the trip

Additional finds for vacay

Everything that is not a dress lives here: the swimwear, the cover-ups, the sandals and the small things that make a suitcase feel finished. Eres' Mouna top and Malou bottoms, the Missoni zigzag bikini and Hunza G's polka-dot Colette are the swim I would pack, and A.Emery's Jalen sandals come in leather and suede so one pair can stay by the pool.

 

Camilla's embellished silk kaftan and the Bananhot, La DoubleJ and Roberto Cavalli cover-ups go over swim. St. Agni's beaded Taxi top and Simon Miller's raffia crochet mini are for the nights you skip the dress, and the MOSCOT Lemtosh, CELINE Triomphe and Bottega Veneta Mitre frames cover the sunglasses. Tom Ford's Soleil Blanc body oil is the last thing in the bag and the first thing out. If you want to keep browsing, I also put together Vacation Dresses, Skirts and Crinkle Swimwear For Vacation.