Green is one of the best colours you can wear near the sea. Against sand, against water, against the bleached out light of a genuinely sunny day, it reads beautifully in a way that black and white simply do not. We’ve been thinking carefully about what actually makes a dress worth taking to the shore, and it’s not just about looking good in photographs, though these absolutely do. It’s about fabric that handles heat, silhouettes that work over a swimsuit, lengths that don’t become a problem when the wind picks up. The green dresses we’ve pulled together here cover sage and olive and deep forest and bright emerald, because different shades do very different things depending on your colouring and the kind of beach day you’re planning. Some are proper cover ups in lightweight cotton or linen. Some are relaxed enough for the beach but polished enough for wherever you go after. None of them are an afterthought. Beach dressing gets dismissed as a category that doesn’t require much thought. These dresses prove that wrong.