This chic yet practical addition to your holiday wardrobe will accentuate your swimwear rather than conceal it

What you see here is a newfangled invention. The beach dress – specifically designed to turn your swimsuit into an outfit you can wear to lunch – is a wardrobe category that didn’t really exist until about a decade ago. I mean, obviously, it was not unknown to wear your bikini as undies en route to the beach. But this was a DIY form of outfit-wrangling, a way of fudging the awkward transition from swimwear to actual clothes without resorting to changing underneath a towel. The vibe was lo-fi: a sarong, an oversized T-shirt, wriggling out of a wet one-piece to avoid a damp patch where you sit on your dress.

The new beach dress is not remotely lo-fi, no sir. It is, in fact, summer fashion’s most glamorous category. Walk on to any shopfloor and you will find a world bedazzled by dresses that have cocktail-hour detailing but are intended to be worn on a beach. The sunlounger is to this decade what the bar stool was to the 00s: the place to showcase your hottest looks.