The best beach cover ups become staples long before you even reach sandy shores. The ones you’ll reach for time and time again are the ones that can do multiple shifts: flung on over a swimsuit for the trek down to the beach, then still doing serious work when the sun goes down and everyone’s sweaty, tired, and hungry but no one wants to get changed again. That’s when you know you’ve hit on a good one. If it can handle that, it can handle anything. It’s less about how gorgeous it looks folded up on your sun lounger, and more about how it performs faced with real wind, real movement, real salt water trickling off you onto the fabric.
Fabric is everything here. Pick linen or cotton gauze because both breathe and dry quickly, which sounds insignificant until you’re halfway through a beach lunch and realising your cover up is halfway towards damp. Anything with some slack and drape as opposed to sticking tight to your body is your friend. Skin clinging to clingy viscose once you’re wet is nobody’s idea of fun reminiscing. Look for something with built in structure too; a real collar, sleeves that aren’t just capes, and a hem that someone actually thought about. They’ll still be easy but feel more ‘garment’ and less ‘beach towel that wants to be a garment.’
How you style them is pretty intuitive. For something shirt based, wear open over your bikini with sleeves rolled up, or button it all the way up and pair with flat sandals to wear as a dress for the walk to the corner cafe.
Throw a kaftan on and nothing else except perhaps a woven tote and some thin gold jewellery, and you can wander from beach to low-key dinner without anyone realising you were in the ocean all day. Sarong style wraps require a bit of effort with the tying but will look better on you for it, and are worth the brief faff. Cover ups shine when it comes to in-between moments. That bit of time in-between lounging by the pool and heading to the breakfast buffet, that stroll along a boardwalk when wearing just swimwear makes you feel exposed, that boat ride where you’re stripping down and layering back up all day long. They’re less about actually wearing at the beach, and more about the thing that facilitates everything else about beach culture. And isn’t that a better job than just looking sexy in your cupboard?
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