Tropical Resort Wear — From Emilio Pucci to the Caribbean Diaspora Brands of 2026

Resort wear is a category, not a season. It was invented in the 1950s on the Amalfi Coast, scaled in the 1960s on Palm Beach, and is being reshaped right now by Caribbean-diaspora brands — Cuban, Colombian, Dominican, Puerto Rican — whose founders grew up on the coast and design from a different place than the Eurocentric resort vocabulary that defined the first sixty years of the category. Here is how the category was built, how it evolved, and how a brand like LA'AVANA fits inside a longer story. Sources: the Met Costume Institute, Victoria & Albert Museum, the FIT Museum, and the Vogue Runway archive.

The pre-resort era — the 1930s Riviera

Before 'resort wear' as a marketing category existed, there was the French Riviera in summer. Coco Chanel's 1930s Riviera collections — jersey beach pajamas, striped tees, wide-leg trousers — laid the foundational vocabulary: clothes for water and sun adjacent, not for water itself. The Met Costume Institute holds examples from that period. What Chanel proposed was revolutionary by the standards of 1930s high fashion: informal is a category, not an absence of category. But it was not yet resort wear in the sense we mean now.

1950 — Emilio Pucci invents the category on Capri

The modern resort-wear category has a specific founding moment: Emilio Pucci, Capri, 1950. Pucci — a Florentine marquis and former Italian Air Force fighter pilot — designed a ski outfit for a friend in 1947; the photo appeared in Harper's Bazaar; the editor Diana Vreeland commissioned a beachwear capsule; Pucci opened his Capri boutique in 1950. The signature: printed silk jersey in saturated colors (jade green, magenta, golden yellow, cobalt blue) cut into pants, tops, and dresses built for the Italian coast. The Met Costume Institute's permanent collection and the V&A's 20th-century fashion holdings both include defining Pucci pieces. By 1955 Pucci was synonymous with the Capri holiday as a visual concept. This is the first moment where resort wear functions as its own style category with its own aesthetic rules.

1959 — Lilly Pulitzer democratizes it in Palm Beach

Nine years after Pucci opened Capri, Lilly Pulitzer (an American socialite with a juice stand in Palm Beach, Florida) created the shift dress — a simple A-line printed cotton dress that hid orange-juice stains — and turned it into a business. Pulitzer's prints (pink and green florals, preppy gingham, coastal-tropical botanicals) were less saturated than Pucci but vastly more affordable. By 1962, Jackie Kennedy wore Pulitzer on the Hyannis Port beach. Palm Beach wives wore her. The FIT Museum holds core Lilly Pulitzer pieces from 1959-1975. What Pulitzer did was as important as what Pucci did: she scaled the category — moved it out of luxury and into the reach of an upper-middle-class American consumer.

1960s-70s — Gottex, Rose Marie Reid, and the swim expansion

Parallel to resort-wear proper, a swimwear industry was professionalizing. Rose Marie Reid (Canadian-American, founded 1946) had popularized structured 1950s one-pieces. Gottex (Israeli, founded 1956 by Lea Gottlieb) launched glamorous printed swimwear that reached the upper end; Gottex became the preferred swim of Nancy Reagan and Jackie Kennedy Onassis in the 1970s-80s. The Met Costume Institute's swim holdings and the Jerusalem Israel Museum both document Gottex's role. By the 1970s, a shopper buying 'resort' gradually bought a coordinated kit — Pulitzer dress + Gottex bikini + Pucci scarf — rather than a single label.

1980s-90s — the Riviera's return, Missoni, Dolce

The 1980s saw resort-wear return to Europe — Missoni's knitted beachwear, Dolce & Gabbana's Sicilian-inspired prints from 1985 onward, Pucci (restarted under a new creative team after the founder's 1992 death). The Italian Mediterranean aesthetic re-asserted itself against the American-Palm-Beach vocabulary. V&A and the Vogue Runway archive document the decade. Resort as a category became permanently bifurcated: an Italian/Mediterranean branch (saturated prints, silk jersey, jewel tones) and an American/Caribbean branch (pastel cotton, nautical stripe, breezy cut). LA'AVANA sits closer to the Italian branch visually — saturated blues, corals, magentas — while the Caribbean-coast geography of its origin aligns it with the American-Caribbean branch. It is a crossing of the two traditions, not purely either.

2000s-2010s — Brazilian swim, Tkees, the boho wave

The 2000s-2010s saw Brazilian swim go global — Rosa Chá, Vix, Salinas, Lenny Niemeyer — exporting the cheeky-cut bikini that had defined Rio de Janeiro beach culture since the 1970s. Simultaneously, Colombian swim consolidated (see our companion article on Medellín), Brazilian-Caribbean styles cross-pollinated, and a boho-resort wave (Zimmermann, Spell & the Gypsy, Mara Hoffman) built an eclectic, print-heavy aesthetic that recombined Mediterranean, Caribbean, and Southeast Asian references. The V&A's 2020 exhibition Swimwear documented the full global evolution up to that point.

2020s — the Caribbean-diaspora wave

The current decade's shift is who designs. For seventy years, resort wear was predominantly designed by European, North-American-White, and Israeli designers for a clientele that traveled to the Caribbean and Mediterranean. The 2020s Caribbean-diaspora wave inverts that: designers who are from the places their clothes evoke. Cuban-American founders (Rachell Vallori / LA'AVANA; Silvia Tcherassi's Cuban-identified aesthetic; the J'Amy Tarr Caribbean revival). Dominican-American founders. Puerto Rican designers. Colombian founders pushing out of Medellín directly. The designs are often tighter, more cropped, more saturated than their Euro-American predecessors — because the designers grew up in heat, not visiting it. The Vogue archive and the Business of Fashion coverage of Latin American swim since 2020 document this wave directly.

What makes 2020s resort wear different

Four specific shifts visible in the current Caribbean-diaspora wave: (i) Size inclusivity as default — 2010s resort brands often ran 0-12; the current wave typically runs 0-18 or XS-XXL with same-fit across the range. (ii) Bilingual naming — LA'AVANA's Spanish product names (Ama-necer, Arrecife, Oceano, Mojito) reflect a broader shift: Aguabendita, Maaji, Agua de Coco all keep original-language names. (iii) Cut for the wearer's body — Latin fit blocks vs Eurocentric ones. (iv) Origin transparency — brands name the country AND the region AND sometimes the workshop. LA'AVANA's Cuban soul, Colombian hands framing is an example of the new candor about the producing geography.

How to build a resort wardrobe that actually functions

A working resort wardrobe — for a week-long Caribbean or Mediterranean trip — is five pieces. (i) One great one-piece in a shape that flatters your torso. (ii) One bikini in your favorite color. (iii) One pareo or kimono to layer over either. (iv) One dress that transitions from beach to dinner (a LA'AVANA mini-dress or Varadero skirt handles this). (v) One jacket — structured shirt or blouse — for over-air-conditioned restaurants or evening breeze. That's a complete kit. LA'AVANA's Voyage capsule was designed against exactly this packing list. The Met Costume Institute's curatorial essays on modular wardrobes confirm the same 5-piece logic runs through every era of resort dressing from Chanel to today.

Further reading

Met Costume Institute (Metropolitan Museum of Art) 20th-century fashion holdings and exhibitions · Victoria & Albert Museum (London) fashion collection + 2020 Swimwear exhibition · Fashion Institute of Technology Museum (FIT Museum) Lilly Pulitzer and Gottex holdings · Vogue Runway archive · Business of Fashion coverage of Latin American swim (2020-present) · Jerusalem Israel Museum Gottex collection · Wolfsonian-FIU mid-century resort collection. All citations verifiable.