There are summer collections designed for the suitcase, and others designed to create an imaginary world. For summer 2026, Tory Burch has chosen the second path with Splash, a proposal built around a precise seaside vocabulary: braided raffia, undulating crochet, light cotton, supple leather and a palette inspired by oceanic nuances. There’s nothing here to break with style. Rather, the collection works on the idea of summer continuity – a wardrobe capable of moving from the beach to the city without radically altering its allure.
The choice of campaign location sheds light on this intention. Photographed by Anthony Seklaoui at GoldenEye, the silhouettes worn by Alex Consani and Sacha Quenby are set against a backdrop that already belongs to a certain mythology of contemporary travel. Formerly the Jamaican estate of Ian Fleming, GoldenEye has for several years occupied a special place in the aesthetics of international luxury: less demonstrative than a classic Caribbean resort, more literary too. It’s no coincidence that many luxury brands are now seeking a form of tropical authenticity, free from the flashy codes of mass tourism.
The collection itself rests on an interesting tension between seaside craftsmanship and American sophistication. The Romy bucket bags, made from woven raffia, continue fashion’s enduring fascination with hand-worked plant materials. For several seasons now, raffia has established itself as a counterpoint to structured urban accessories: an irregular, porous material that takes on time, sun and use. At Tory Burch, it retains both a decorative and a narrative function. Weaving evokes both Mediterranean coastal markets and certain Caribbean craft traditions.
Cotton tank tops adorned with silk flowers introduce another dimension to the contemporary summer wardrobe: that of a discreet, almost domestic romanticism. Here again, technical detail is more important than visual effect. Cotton retains a functional presence, while floral appliqués shift the piece towards something more tactile, more constructed.
Flat leather sandals, omnipresent in the collection, recall the persistent return of an aesthetic of controlled simplicity in American luxury. In recent years, a number of New York fashion houses seem to have moved away from post-social networking maximalism, towards a more stable, wearable silhouette, where material quality and fit replace the immediate trend effect. Tory Burch is an active participant in this evolution. Founded in 2004, the House has gradually moved away from an image of accessible sportswear to develop a more mature language, notably under the influence of recent collections presented in New York, where volume and texture have taken on greater importance.
Splash thus appears less as a simple summer capsule than as an exercise in coherence. Jamaica becomes a cultural backdrop as much as a chromatic background. The materials tell the story of the journey without lapsing into folklore. Above all, the collection reflects a broader evolution in contemporary luxury: the desire for objects capable of accompanying several rhythms of life, rather than spectacular moments destined only to be photographed.
In Seklaoui’s images, summer is never totally euphoric. It seems slowed down, almost silent. Like those late afternoons when the heat finally begins to fall, and clothing ceases to be a signal and becomes simply a way of inhabiting time.
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