There’s a beach on the Oregon coast that the internet hasn’t found yet. I know this because I was there on a Tuesday with a book and a towel and approximately four surfers who looked at me the way you look at someone who has correctly identified the thing you love. We didn’t speak. The social contract of a nearly empty beach is simple and perfect: we are all here on purpose, and that’s the whole point.
What you bring to a place like that is a kind of argument for how you want to spend your time. So here’s my beach packing list—not the one that covers every contingency, but the one built around a single question: what do I actually need to be fully here?
My Beach Packing List
Think about this list like you would designing a room. William Morris said it best: “Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” Everything here was chosen with that standard. Because good taste is knowing exactly what you need.
The Bag
For people who are tired of raffia. Structured where beach bags usually aren’t, striped in a way that reads as deliberate rather than nautical, and large enough to hold everything on this list without looking like it’s trying.
Clare V.
The Towel
The kind of object that justifies its place in your life by being exactly what it says it is. Large enough to actually lie on, soft enough to make you want to stay longer than you planned, and in a color combination that looks like a painting someone made of late afternoon. The marigold does something to sunlight that I cannot explain and will not try to.
Parachute
The Swimsuit
A one-piece doing real structural work (support, compression, the kind of fit that doesn’t require you to think about it after you put it on) while looking like it was made by someone who has actually been to a beach. Wear it in the water. Wear it with the sarong to lunch. Wear it as a bodysuit with linen trousers on the way home. I’m obsessed—and so is the rest of the internet.
Left on Friday
The Cover-Up
Cotton voile, handprinted in Italy by artisans in Como. It drapes the way fabric does when it’s been made by someone who knows what they’re doing. Tie it at the hip, wrap it at the waist, let it do what it wants. (It will.)
Bembien
The Hat
The one you wear when you want to look like you’ve been going to the beach your whole life. Structured enough to stay put, relaxed enough to forget you’re wearing it. If you, in fact, can’t get enough of raffia, the crochet texture does everything.
Jenni Kayne
The Sunglasses
Chunky acetate, a barely-there cat eye, and a tortoise pattern dark enough to feel sophisticated and warm enough to feel like summer. It flatters every face shape and looks good with literally everything.
Clare V.
The SPF
The sunscreen gods have answered our prayers: this bottle goes on clean and leaves no cast. Bless. The unglamorous part of the beach that is nonetheless non-negotiable—recommend applying liberally.
Bask Suncare
The Body Glow
A summer non-negotiable—beach or no beach. What it does is specific: not sparkle, not shimmer in the disco ball sense, but a warmth that catches light in a way that makes you look like you’ve been somewhere good. I wear it every day from June through August. The people who know, know. The people who don’t just think you look remarkably well-vacationed.
The Jewelry
I have this necklace in the Iridescent Abalone, if you’re asking. The compliments are consistent, and I have stopped being surprised by them. She’s a stunner.
Kendra Scott
The Book
Ten years after her debut, she’s back with a thriller about a Hollywood producer who returns to her alma mater for a funeral and finds herself entangled with the one who got away—or really, the one she got away from. Smart, dark, with a Gone Girl-esque turn and an ending that I’ll never get over. It comes out July 7—pre-order and prepare to be unreachable for hours.
Jessica Knoll
This post was last updated on June 23, 2026, to include new insights.
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