How I’m styling board shorts this summer

and how some trends can transcend the ephemeral

Jun 20, 2025

Did you see that Marie Claire article on swimwear trends women are actually wearing this summer? In case you didn’t, here it is. And I was featured in it🥹 a pretty cool thing to happen just a few days away from the one-year anniversary of sending out my first newsletter. Week after week.

A year ago, I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about swim shirts or capelets or keys or dolphins. But writing this newsletter has made me pay attention (really pay attention) to what I like (and don’t), which brings to the surface how certain items connect us to something personal, something from our past that we get to re-live through fashion.

That’s exactly how it was with my Rosie Assoulin board pants:

I saw them around 2015 and couldn’t stop thinking about them. I didn’t even know why I was so drawn to them. When I had the chance to get them around 2021, I still wanted them just as much:

Now that the board short trend has resurfaced, I get why I feel so connected to it. It’s not that deep but it certainly feels special to me: it reminds me of childhood, of wearing those Quicksilver board shorts I would steal from my brothers’ closet when I wanted something different—a color or a silhouette I didn’t have in mine.

It’s the same instinct I see now in my daughters. How they go into their dad’s closet during dress-up, hunting for the exact color or t-shirt length to finish the outfit they’re putting together.

Miu Miu and its water-sport inspired spring 2024 and spring 2025 collections (the precursors to the trend) also brought back the memory of those surf shops I’d go to in Barranquilla as a teenager—Tavarúa, the one at Villa Country I can’t remember the name, with the cool staff all decked in Billabong.

Just like my daughters, I still find myself stealing from my dad’s and my husband’s closet when I need something that isn’t in mine. And now, this summer, styling swim shorts feels exactly like that again—following an instinct, expanding what’s possible, simply having fun with a pretty practical and low-stakes trend that also connects me with something from my past.