How to look good when it’s hot, hot, hot brilliant stay-cool pieces

Don’t sweat your style this summer – Anna Murphy has found some brilliant pieces to keep you cool

It’s not like we Brits get that much practice at hot-weather dressing. Which is why it doesn’t tend to come naturally to us. I certainly struggled with it for more years than a self-respecting fashion director should probably admit in public. Now I realise I never took the time – nor spent the money – to get my head around who my hot-weather self was, sartorially speaking. So I tended to wear the same things year after year, and/or things that didn’t quite feel like me. And at the end of each summer I would – tellingly, I now think – pack them away without a second thought.

I shop completely differently now. I look for clothes that, as much as possible, will work for me almost all year round. Sure, I still store my beachwear, but – by way of one example – the floaty skirt I wore all last summer saw me through this

winter too, with the addition of opaque tights, boots and a chunky knit. Transeasonality. Another of those terrible words the fashion industry likes to throw at us, yet, if you nail the concept in your wardrobe, it’s a real life-changer.

The brands don’t always make it easy. To my mind a lot of the right kind of clothes in terms of practical requirements have the wrong kind of aesthetic for anyone who isn’t a) 21 and b) a size 8. Shops offer up too many clothes that are a kind of post-hippy fantasy – part Coachella festival, part Talitha Getty floating around in Marrakech. I suppose it’s because hot-weather dressing is a fantasy for most of us, for most of the year. But the truth is that boho does not do most of us any favours. So much so, in fact, that I prefer to call it noho.

Here are some pieces that get a yes-yes from me.