My Summer Wish List 2026: The Pieces I’m Actually Buying
A short, honest summer wish list. The pieces I keep adding to cart and the few I’ll actually buy, with where to find each one.
I keep a running wish list the way some people keep a diary. Things go on, things come off, and the few that survive a month of consideration are usually the ones worth buying.
This is not a list of everything I like. It is the short version, the things I have thought about more than once and will probably own by the end of the summer
Every summer I tell myself I have enough white dresses and every summer I am wrong. The one I want this year is simple, cotton, slightly oversized, the kind of thing that works for a beach lunch and an evening with a pair of gold sandals and nothing else.
The test for a good white summer dress is whether it works with flat sandals in the day and dressed up at night without changing anything but the shoes.
I have been carrying the same straw tote for two summers and it is starting to show it. The replacement I want is a little more structured, a raffia bag with a leather trim, something that holds its shape and looks as good on a terrace as it does at a market.
I resisted the flip-flop for years on principle. I have given up. The elevated leather flip-flop, in a warm tan or black, is the shoe I reach for more than any other in summer, and a good one looks far more expensive than it is.
A matching linen set is the laziest way to look put-together, which is exactly why I want one. Trousers and a shirt in the same fabric, worn together or split apart across other outfits. The math on a good linen set is unbeatable, two pieces that become four or five.
Not new, not trendy, just the right pair. A medium gold hoop is the one piece of jewelry I would keep if I had to choose, and the pair I want now is slightly thicker than what I own, the kind that finishes an outfit without asking for attention.
A printed silk scarf, tied at the neck, around the handle of a bag, or over the head on a windy day by the water. It does nothing useful and changes everything.
That is the list. Six things, all considered, all the kind of pieces I will still be wearing long after the season ends. The white dress first, the scarf last, and everything in between somewhere on the way to checkout.
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