How To Get The Look: Cover-ups

This Prama kaftan jacket from Malene Birger is an elegant solution for hols, great thrown over shorts and vest or swimwear

Oh dear, cover-ups. Like the emperor's new clothes in reverse.

Yes, absurd is probably the only way to describe the experience of shopping for something capable of covering bingo wings without interrupting the line of your dress. Or swimwear of Victorian proportions that won't look too prudish in Marbs.

Enter the cropped cardi or the swimsuit skirt, urgh.

Exactly – the problem with cover-ups is that they tend to be garments that nobody would wear out of anything other than deep-seated insecurity about their wobblier bits of flesh.

So the answer is therapy?

If you can't adopt a devil-may-care attitude to the whole business, the trick is to find something you might actually wear even if you weren't simply trying to obscure the world's view of your bottom. This Prama kaftan jacket from Malene Birger is an elegant solution for hols, great thrown over shorts and vest or swimwear (£269, my-wardrobe.com, pictured above).

How about something less yacht, more pedalo?

Asos has a wide selection of crochet dresses, including a crochet beach dress (£38, asos.com), that are less fussy than strategically tied sarongs. But we forbid you to wear it with a cropped cardi.