Nailing the role, on vacation!

Dressing for your vacation location wisely. Plus, beach reads!

Hello friends! Kellyn Here.

Here I am! With trees in my pocket.

I’m gearing up for some summer traveling and I couldn’t be more excited. I can’t wait to share with you all what I’ve packed for these trips and the fashion I’ll bear witness to!

Today, the 26th, I’m headed to the East Coast for a family trip to Cape Cod- truly my favorite place on earth. Every summer as a kid we would go to The Cape with my Massachusetts family and stay in the same house, eat the same things, play the same games- it was everything that good family traditions should be. If you’ve been to Cape Cod, maybe you understand the magic. The dunes along the sand with tall grasses and hilly bluffs hold back a very alive ocean- it’s salty and briny and cradle creatures big and small. Four seas swirl around this little swath of land that’s dotted with freshwater ponds and nature reserves, raw bars, and weathered shingle clad shacks all claiming to have the best lobster roll in New England.

home sweet home

When I was little, there was no cell phone service out there, so we relayed our lunch orders via walkie talkie from the beach to my mom and auntie up at the house, they were/are so good to us. In the mornings, my dad would go pick up Dunkin’ Donuts and everyone got their favorite. I liked maple, my brother would get the pinky. We waited out any rainy days by watching Rocket Power under a big blue afghan or using our imagination to craft the most elaborate of worlds to play make believe in. We’d collect hermit crabs in red pails and try not to cut our feet on razor clams- after enough stitches I succumbed to water shoes around the summer of ’07. My Uncle would talk about the Red Sox with his perfect Boston accent- a sound paired best with seagulls in the distance and crashing waves below the bluff. When my grammy got too old to walk down the dunes to the ocean, she would sit with the legs dangling over the deck and wave to us. We would walk out as far as we could during low tide and wave back. And then we would eat dinner as fast as we could so we could get back outside and keep playing. It was only a couple weeks of each summer, but it was my whole childhood.

My dad had this incredible move where he would order (from a catalog over the phone) a week’s worth of new clothes for the trip and just have it sent out there. He would hardly pack anything and have his new Cape Cod persona waiting for him upon his arrival.

I’m definitely my parents’ daughter.

mom, dad, baby brother, and I doing our best J.Crew catalog impression

This dress has pockets!

As a kid, this was my fashion Super Bowl. For those short few weeks when I wasn’t in Colorado, I could take on a whole new style, become a whole new girl. I would lay out every combination of possible outfits in the “Staging Area” aka the hallway outside my room, and plan every day down to the outfit and accessories. I dressed up nice for the airport because that’s what my parents did and felt like a fancy and mysterious child sashaying through the airport- who is she? Where is she going? What is she feverishly scribbling in that travel journal?

Two outfits I’m sure I was amped on

Time moves impossibly slow when you’re a kid and I waited all year long for that moment we were finally in my Uncle’s car, positively bursting with excitement to be on our way to The Cape. Over the bridge into the most magical place I had ever been. And when I say this car was packed, I mean this car was packed. To the absolute gills. Beach accoutrements like you wouldn’t believe. Boogie boards, skim boards, balls of every kind and sport, pool toys, buckets on buckets, sunscreen that was unknowably open and covering the whole back seat, umbrellas, baseball gloves, the perfect beach read I had picked out months prior and read the first few chapters just to confirm it was indeed perfect, and a bunch of giddy cousins squeezed in-between, picking up right where we left off the summer before. As the kid who was nostalgic for moments before they were even over, the exact moment of the start of the vacation was in every way perfect to me.

While I could wax poetic about the splendors of The Cape for -literally- ever, I’ll get to the point. And that point is, as I get older and smarter, I realize how much better it feels when/if you buy new things for a vacation, that you stay cognizant about it’s wearability after the trip. It is possible to dress for the environment you’ll be in on your vacation, but not fall victim to buying new things that you can ONLY wear in that place.

Pilgrimage to the ocean is sacred to us land locked mountain dwellers. All of us who live in mountain towns know that primal call to submerge our dry dry bones in salt water for a good few weeks a year, if we can be so lucky.

A lot of my dirtbag buddies (men and women) have one uniform for summer and one for winter, no matter where they are. To each their own always and forever, but the plaid Kühl shirt and Bedrock sandals look better in Bozeman than Sicily, they just do.

My TOGS readers, if you’re like me (which I know you are) you also love to nail the role.

I see you guys nailing your roles as skiers and hikers and climbers. While it may feel more second nature now, a lot of thought has gone into those uniforms and into deciding what we wear and how we present ourselves to the world. We want to come across as capable but not cocky, in the know of industry trends, and up to date on the latest equipment. Nailing the role.

So it only makes sense that we want to nail our roles on vacation and in different settings as well! We know how good it feels to be well dressed for the environment we are in.

Blah blah blah ok get to the point, Wilson, how do we do that without buying a whole new wardrobe of seersucker and polo shirts? (remember we’re using Cape Cod as our vacation spot example for this letter) And why would I want to wear something that’s not my style or true to my personality?

Hey Devil’s Advocate, that’s not what I’m saying! I agree that that you should never wear anything to “fit in” and you should always stay true to your style in any locale- but there’s a way to both be you and buy vacation clothes that you’ll wear again. Oh and NAIL THE ROLE.

If you too were a theater kid or perhaps born a Leo, maybe start with a vacation mood board. Here’s mine for the Cape-

What it is: Nostalgic, peaceful, classic, soft. It smells like hot coffee, used books, salt, damp wood, a freshly struck matchbook. It feels like cotton, terry cloth, the back on an oyster shell, the thin stem of a wine glass, a chipped porcelain plate. It sounds like a radio, ice cream truck chimes, creaky floorboards, the call for dinner from downstairs, and a hot outdoor shower.

What it’s not: stereotypically east coasty. No cheesy old money ‘costumes’, single aesthetics, or stiff inorganic fabrics.

I’m looking for casual, easy breezy, pieces that can be worn again in the mountains.

So here’s what I’m packing-