Oversized Striped Beach Wrap

An oversized wrap earns its place in a resort collection by replacing several products at once: beach towel, sarong, shoulder cover and picnic blanket in one piece. At 190 × 92 cm this is genuinely oversized - wide enough to wrap around the body and knot, long enough to lie on - yet it folds to the size of a water bottle, which is the trade a traveller is always willing to make.

The fabric is a lightweight polyester gauze with a soft, cotton-like touch. For beach use, polyester is not a compromise but the correct choice: it dries in minutes after a swim, does not soak up water and turn heavy the way a cotton towel does, shakes off sand easily, and survives being crammed into a beach bag day after day. Machine washable, quick to line-dry, and it holds its shape through a season of salt water and sunscreen.

The design is Harbour Lines: an ivory ground with a band system worked in from each end - a broad navy bar, a wide coral stripe, then thinner lines of soft pink and white easing out towards the hem. The stripes are yarn-dyed, which matters more at the beach than anywhere else: the colour lives inside the yarn, so sun, chlorine and salt water fade the surface far less than they would a printed cloth. Each end finishes in a row of hand-knotted navy tassels, tied by hand, which is where the resort-market look comes from.

At 190 × 92 cm (approximately 74.8 × 36.2 inches), it wraps around the body as a sarong, drapes across the shoulders as a sun cover, lies flat as a beach or picnic mat, doubles as a light blanket on a flight, and works as a head wrap when the sun is high. One SKU, five uses - which is exactly how resort buyers merchandise it.