Some of my favorite design stories start with a happy accident, and this one is no exception.
A few weeks before I left for Italy, I was scrolling Facebook Marketplace — one of my favorite places to hunt for fabric — when a maroon and pink striped print stopped me mid-scroll. It turned out to be a duvet cover and matching pillowcases, originally from Ikea, being sold by a woman who was reworking her bedroom in a different direction. The second I saw the stripe, I knew it was special. I didn't have a plan for it yet, but I bought it anyway, certain it belonged in our Fall '26 Club Mascota capsule.
Then I went to Paraggi.
Tucked between Portofino and Santa Margherita Ligure, Paraggi is one of the only real sand beaches on the Italian Riviera — small, impossibly pretty, and better known by its nickname: Billionaire Beach. I'd been drawn to the Italian Riviera for years before I ever set foot there, and being in it finally didn't disappoint. There's a specific kind of elegance to that coastline — unhurried, sun-warmed, quietly confident. The kind of place where nobody is trying too hard, because the water and the light are already doing all the work.
What caught me most, though, wasn't the water. It was the umbrellas.
Every beach club along Paraggi has its own stripe — its own signature color story, distinct from the club next door. Walk the shoreline and you pass through a whole spectrum of cabana stripes, each one a little different, each one instantly recognizable as that club and no other. And standing there, it clicked: that maroon and pink fabric sitting at home wasn't just a lucky find. It was a cabana stripe waiting for its beach club.
That's when I knew this trip wasn't just going to inspire the next design — it was going to be the shoot location for it. I knew I had to bring the Riviera Dress and our best-selling Sailor Bow to life right there on that sand, because a setting like Paraggi doesn't come around twice, and these two pieces deserved exactly that kind of backdrop.
When I sat down to design what would become the Riviera Dress, I kept coming back to three words: upscale, upcycled, unique. Paraggi gave me the first — that sun-soaked, effortless elegance I wanted every piece to carry. A secondhand Ikea duvet gave me the second, proof that the most elevated fabric doesn't have to be new — it just has to be found. And because every piece we make is sourced this way, one thrifted find at a time, you get the third: no two Riviera Dresses will ever come out quite the same.
It's a small detail, but it's the whole philosophy of this brand in one piece of fabric: take something beautiful, make it sustainable, and never let it be exactly like anyone else's.
The Riviera Dress in Cabana Stripe, shot on the very beach that inspired it, is coming soon — and now you know exactly how it got there.