Any holiday wardrobe worthy of its fashion credentials

Après Chanel, le déluge. Since that time, nautical references have become the staples of any holiday wardrobe worthy of its fashion credentials and they look good in a metropolitan environment too. This season alone, at Jil Sander, Raf Simons has come up with striped designs reminiscent of hyper-real, oversized deckchairs. There's a sunny maritime feel to Miuccia Prada's less conventionally coloured stripes, gracing tiered sun dresses and wide-brimmed hats  perfect for the most fashionable beaches and equally upbeat fun-fur stoles what with the sand, perhaps best left at home. More stripes at Jean-Paul Gaultier, where slouchy knitted trousers and jumpsuits are the designer's most recent take on the Breton knit a French fisherman's sweater in its original incarnation and as much a signature here as the conical bra and dressing men in skirts.

"The Breton stripe T-shirt is a childhood memory for me," Gaultier told the Financial Times recently. "My grandmother used to dress me in Breton tops, so when I think of navy stripes I feel a nostalgia for that era when I was growing up. And then, of course, there is Jean Genet and Querelle de Brest and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's film of that novel. At the beginning of the 1980s, I started wearing the Breton stripe top again. I wore them everywhere, even with a tuxedo for gala evenings. I paired them with everything jeans, even a kilt."

In rather less cartoonish vein, the editor of Vogue Paris, Emmanuelle Alt, has also adopted this quintessentially Gallic look, wearing it mainly with skinny denim, and only adding to its appeal.

A brief history of nautical dress: there is some dissent over who, precisely, gave the world the sailor suit. The British claim that it was their navy that first wore trousers made from ticking used to cover mattresses around 200 years ago. They were smeared with tar to make them waterproof. The Americans insist that sailor trousers with wide legs that were easy to roll up to the knee to keep dry on deck were their invention, however. Whatever, these were soon everywhere, matched with jackets dyed with indigo from India. A hat, also tar-covered, was worn at sea, then adorned with ribbons and flowers when ships sailed into port.

By the mid-19th century, a standard maritime uniform had been established. It was a symbol not only of a seafaring existence but also of the hedonism associated with those who wore it, given the folkloric girl in every port. Queen Victoria restored the sailor suit to more prim and proper prominence when, as a birthday gift for her husband, she had a children's version made for their oldest son, Bertie, the future Edward VII. The heir to the throne then, all of four years old was photographed in said garb, thereby setting the standard for wealthy families to dress their children in nautical outfits, including Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, who was photographed in this manner not long before his death.