Surfer girl fashion is back: from board shorts and luxury flip-flops to the leather cord necklaces Jennifer Lawrence and Emily Ratajkowski are working, embrace your inner beach bum for summer 2024

Feb 18 , 2024

Chanel’s spring/summer 2024 saw elements of surfer girl chic. Photos: Handout

It’s official: high fashion is going to the beach, with Miuccia Prada at Miu Miu and Virginie Viard at Chanel embracing the frivolity of beachwear this summer – think Carrie Bradshaw in boardies

From Blue Crush to Barbie, surfer girl chic has endured for generations – now those twee shell necklaces and cutesy anklets are being elevated to high jewellery for zoomers who missed the party

It might be 20 years since its ultimate reference, Blue Crush, but the surfer girl endures as an eternal summer vibe. Especially when Miuccia Prada, fashion’s ultimate weathervane, deems it so.

For the designer’s spring/summer 24 collection for Miu Miu, board shorts – quintessential surfer girl fare – made an appearance. They were styled with polos and button-downs, smart little jackets and nifty little beach-ready rope sandals, complete with neon plasters around the toe. As Prada said in the show notes of the collection, it was about “embracing of unique characters, the joy of life”.

And what could be more joyful than a day at the beach?

Board shorts and flip-flops for Miu Miu spring/summer 2024

Meanwhile, the kind of shorts typically associated with surfers or lairy dads by the pool were seen on cool girls at last August’s Copenhagen Fashion Week, paired with blazers and heels in a profound aesthetic mash up. For Chanel’s resort show, staged in Los Angeles last year, ombré sunset tweeds, mesh board shorts, leg warmers and swim tanks all featured in Virginie Viard’s tribute to the famed Venice Beach and all the subcultures, including surf ones, that call it home.

Let’s not forget though that the ultimate fashion girl, Carrie Bradshaw, did it first – wearing board shorts twice in Sex and the City when she was nowhere near a beach. And the shadow cast by Barbie clearly isn’t going anywhere fast.

Meanwhile, for his first prefall show for Louis Vuitton, men’s creative director Pharrell Williams delivered a line-up of Hawaii-inspired looks that cleverly combined dandyism and a distinct surfer vibe.

Other signs the surfer girl is back? The 90s-style leather cord necklaces spied on everyone from Jennifer Lawrence, who recently wore a red Tiffany & Co. cord necklace, to Emily Ratajkowski. So too flip-flops, with Chanel’s version for spring/summer 2024 signalling the return of the high fashion flip-flop, alongside the still-cult versions from The Row. Rubber versions were spied on the runways at the St Agni show at Australian Fashion Week last year and at Helmstedt at Copenhagen Fashion Week. Anklets, body chains and even belly button piercings have all had a fine jewellery makeover.

Chanel’s cruise 2023-24 campaign is big on beachwear

Then there’s the shell jewellery. Which, while nothing new – shells were used in prehistoric jewellery made from found objects – has moved beyond the puka shell necklace of your eighth-grade surfer boy crush into the world of fine jewellery. The likes of celebrity favourite London jeweller Jessica McCormack have incorporated shells into recent collections and so too French jewellery Goossens, which last year collaborated with luxe swimwear label Eres.