If I can take you back along the memory lane of holidays past, beach attire was very much a baggy oversized T-shirt you were happy to sweat in, and whatever Millets floral cool bag/market basket/Tesco bag for life you could ram into an easyJet locker. Fast forward to our hyper-visual, super-brag status era and how things have changed. Lounging around on the sand now requires an aesthetic mood and carefully curated style persona.
I can remember being aghast the first time I flopped on Pampelonne beach, that heavenly strip of pampered St Tropez princesses, and saw a Louis Vuitton carry-all being dumped next to a lounger holding children’s spades. This now feels commonplace. We have arrived at a point where the humble beach bag has morphed into a luxury play, or in the words of Libby Page, Net-a-Porter’s market director, “Excess-ories”.
Last weekend at the Hurlingham Club’s Outdoor Pool I was confronted by the cult Prada raffia tote dangling from the arm of one member (calm down, I only have guest status). Given that the usual summer luggage of this crowd tends more towards preppy LL Bean tote bags, or something they found on the floor of the Range Rover, this felt like quite the cut-through. That glossy west Londoner isn’t the only one who’s fallen for the charms of a status summer tote.
Lyst, the fashion shopping app, has noted an increase of 144 per cent in searches for Prada’s triangle raffia tote bag (a cool £1,500), as well as a rise of 183 per cent in sea.