Freshly minted for summer 2017, I give you the non-eccentric kaftan. After half a century of alternative living, the kaftan has gone conventional. Where a kaftan once demanded a rooftop and soft drugs, the new look is perfectly at home on a sunlounger with a Diet Coke.
I am not sure I completely approve. I kind of liked the kaftan in its original format. I loved the free-spiritedness, the definitive out-of-office symbolism of joyously anti-power dressing. On the other hand, the new kaftan is a whole lot easier to wear.
Where the first-generation kaftan was voluminous and floor-length and most likely semi-transparent, the new version is closer to… well, a dress. It has a hemline in which you can walk – even up a flight of stairs, or carrying two drinks – without falling flat on your face. This does come in useful if your holiday isn’t wall-to-wall getting stoned on rooftops. You can walk at the edge of the sea – or around the edge of the pool, picking up discarded wet towels and goggles – without the fabric getting sodden.
The shape of the new kaftan generally nods to the concept of a waist, which helps clarify that yes, you are in fact dressed and not still in your nightie, although it will never be so constricting as to make eating both bread and fried potatoes at every meal, as is obligatory in beach restaurants, any kind of an issue. You can wear it barefoot, put on white trainers to go to the shops, maybe put on proper shoes like the ones pictured if you are going out to dinner.
The new kaftan, in other words, maximises your holiday downtime. It may not have the visual impact of the original kaftan, the Kate Bush vibes of which are Instagratification personified, but what you lose in social media likes you are more than compensated for in actual happiness. By being super-practical and broadly appropriate to a range of settings, this kind of kaftan gives you an extra 10 minutes to read your book on the aforementioned sunlounger. You might get that moment in the quiet of the morning before it is time to pack the bags for the beach, or at the end of the day when you should really be getting up and doing something about supper but the light is just too nice. Any kaftan that makes that moment reality is, surely, the kaftan of dreams.
• Jess wears dress, £34.99, hm.com. Sandals, £235, lkbennett.com. Chair, £120, grahamandgreen.co.uk
Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Laurence Close at Carol Hayes Management
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