When Kourtney Kardashian accused her sister Kim of “copying her dolce vita lifestyle” in an episode of The Kardashians, the loanword, synonymous with a special sort of heedless pleasure endemic to the ever-chic Italian Riviera, suddenly morphed into a viral attitude towards life. For the throngs of TikTok influencers all claiming in on their share of the sweet life, it was about conveying a self-indulgent, care-free attitude to daily living—no holiday needed. The key to flaunting this laissez-faire lifestyle from the comfort of your own home? Head-to-toe resort wear, preferably citrus print, preferably matching.
If co-ordinating ‘sets’ have become a hallmark of contemporary resort wear, they find their roots in the ‘beach pajamas’ of the 1920s, worn by the ladies of the Sun Belt as they gambolled about the French Riviera or Florida’s Palm Beach. The proliferation of railroads meant that the monied elite were now able to trade in frigid winters for the more clement climates of sea-and-sand resorts, where nature, carnival, and luxury happily intermingled in attitude and attire. Both journalists and designers bought into the sartorial trend—resort wear (and its sparkly surroundings) provided colourful content for a public now able to peer into the lifestyles of the rich and the famous via the social pages of a rapidly growing mass media.
The ensuing frenzy of holiday collections throughout the 20th Century was perhaps best encapsulated by Peter Pulitizer, son of the ‘Priestess of Palm Beach’ designer Lilly Pulitzer, when he described his late mother’s life as “too much singing and dancing… too many ice cubes tingling… and way too many colours.” To wear one of Pulitzer’s brightly coloured summer dresses (or any resort wear, for that matter) was to embody the performative rituals of holiday—the indulgence, the frivolity, the endless joy.
But by the turn of the millennium, resort wear—now also known as pre-spring, cruise, and pre-collection—became uncomfortably sticky with consumeristic connotations. The off-season collection was remodelled as a retailer and fashion house’s delight, plumping up shop racks (and revenue) with in-between offerings that feed our (sick) obsession for newness, now. Capitalising on the rat race’s commodification of leisure—work hard, play hard! — the generally lower price point of resort wear also took advantage of a new class of consumer: the aspirational buyer.
In the past two years of our post-pandemic era—and as TikTok’s response to the Kardashian Deep in Dolce fracas proves—the tides have undeniably changed: resort wear has lost its tacky tag and has transformed into a uniform for daily living. Houses like Loewe have concretised their holiday collections with permanent lines like Paula’s Ibiza as logoed raffia basket bags replace leather carry-alls as the city shopper of choice. Flip-flop brand Havaianas reported a surge in sales since 2021 as the footwear of sand bums suddenly became acceptable for pounding pavement.
Speaking on the rise in popularity of resort dressing, Net-A-Porter’s Market Director Libby Page boils it down to recent cultural movements with a touch of post-pandemic escapism. “Whether that’s shows like The White Lotus — our exclusive brand Clio Peppiat was featured on the show and we have seen brilliant sales—or celebrities’ documentation of their outfits whilst they’re away,” Libby explains. “Dua Lipa’s vacation style has had people glued to what she’s wearing and our Christopher Esber mini dress [that she was seen wearing] has almost sold out. Post-pandemic everyone is craving escapism and they’re looking to people of note to inspire them.”
Perhaps we’ve realised that the only way to manage the shifting sands of the global economy is to tap into our inner Kenergy and live life as though it’s, well… just beach, sentiment and all. The rise in popularity of contemporary resort wear brands like Louisa Ballou and The Attico as well as a renewed interest in the OG labels of endless summers, Etro and Pucci, reflect a push for the recalibration of leisure, and the feel-goods that come with it, from an earned commodity to a daily right.
Taller Mamo, who have so perfectly captured the zeitgeist with their “quality-driven pieces for the modern woman who wants to feel fabulous without trying too hard” reinforce that resort wear has become more associated with the self-care and wellness rituals of a holiday than a naff aesthetic garb. “We consider ourselves an evening brand that steals the feeling from resort wear in order to give that idea of nonchalance, laidbackness,” explain the brand’s founders Riccardo Audisio and Yago Goicoechea, “for example, we always think of kaftans as a metaphor for self-care and wellbeing. If you think of a woman wearing a kaftan, you’ll never picture her in a stressful situation (unless you are Mike White writing a new season of White Lotus).”
Similarly, Donatella Versace (the real Queen of La Dolce Vita—sorry Kim, sorry Kourtney) and Dua Lipa’s La Vacanza collection, which was unveiled during this year’s Cannes Film Festival and then available immediately for purchase, embodies the sexiness and confidence of a woman on holiday – while avoiding the usual brassy tropes of resort wear. “Basically, we wanted to make the holiday wardrobe that I saw myself wearing all summer and that I felt other people would enjoy,” says Dua Lipa of La Vacanza, “it’s fun, it’s flirty… we wanna get dressed and look cute.”
As climate change threatens to turn our world into one big scorching Sun Belt, perhaps we need to reimagine leisure as a feeling, a caring practice for ourselves and others, daily—and not a commodification of natural spaces like beaches and ocean. Resort wear, with its laidback aesthetic and mood-lifting palette, allows us to soften the barbed edges of our daily grind, to live in real time what Roland Barthes called “the Beach Effect”: a slowed-down reconsidering of our surroundings in order to see the beauty in the everyday—whether it be on the streets of London or the beaches of the Italian Riveria. Although she was speaking about her iconic blonde hair, Donatella’s wise words on embracing the sun could most definitely be applied to contemporary resort wear: “to [wear resort wear] means to be caressed by the sun, and to be your own sun—strong full of energy, bright, and warming!”