Resort

Resort is the one edit that is honestly seasonal, and the one we have got most wrong over ten years. The mistake we made for six of them was buying it as a holiday wardrobe — kaftans, a lot of white, things that only make sense on a boat. Almost none of our customers live like that. What they do is spend eleven weeks in a city at thirty-eight degrees, and go to an island for nine days of it.

So it has been rebuilt around the eleven weeks rather than the nine days. It is smaller each year: twenty-two pieces in 2021, nine now. What went is everything that could only be worn with sand underneath it.

The nine

Two dresses that work in the city

Long, in cotton with enough body to hold away from the skin, and neither of them white. Both have been worn to an office and to dinner in Antiparos.

A trouser for thirty-eight degrees

Wide, high, and in a cloth that does not stick. The single hardest thing to buy well and the reason this edit exists at all.

Two shirts

One to wear, one to wear over. The second is cut two sizes larger than it is labelled, deliberately, and it is the piece that sells out.

Swimwear, three pieces only

Because it is impossible to buy in Athens in July at any level between a supermarket and a boutique that thinks it is Saint-Tropez.

A flat sandal that is not a beach sandal

Leather, unlined, and comfortable on marble. Two colours, and it is in the edit for the eleven weeks rather than the nine days.

A hat that packs

Rolls into a bag and comes out a hat. This took three years to find and we stock exactly one.

A note about August

The shop closes for two weeks in August and everybody goes. It costs us the best fortnight of resort trade, we do not ship during it, and it is not up for discussion — which does mean that if you want something for the second half of August, the last useful week to come in is the one before we close.