Tomato girl summer: giving la dolce vita a gen Z makeover

Strolling around Italian markets with a woven bag in hand is the fashion vibe for summer 2023

Do you enjoy shopping at markets on holiday? Do you own a raffia basket bag or pair of espadrilles? Have you downloaded the Duolingo app to learn French, Spanish or Italian? If you answered yes to the above, congratulations. You are on trend for tomato girl summer.

After hot girl summer in 2019 (taking selfies in swimwear), cinnamon girl autumn in 2020 (drinking pumpkin spice lattes in cosy jumpers) and short king spring in 2022 (being a man who is not tall) comes tomato girl summer to claim the zeitgeist.

Tomato girl summer began on TikTok, where a video collage by @girlthings57, featuring leather sandals on colourful tiled floors, soulful portraits of sundress-wearing market shoppers and pizza slices dripping with tomato, has racked up 157,000 views.

More a vibe than a trend, it has nevertheless been borne out in consumer habits. There has been a 644% and 289% increase in searches on the online fashion marketplace Depop for linen trousers and woven bags respectively since the start of August. Moving even further into the mainstream, M&S has launched a line of basket bags and espadrilles “inspired by” the tomato girl summer aesthetic.

Tomato girl summer is an exuberant and technicolour rebuke to the quiet luxury trend. Tomato girl summer fashion embraces bright fruit and vegetable prints, with lemons and cherries vying for space with tomatoes. It has cross-generational appeal, embracing the retro allure of full-skirted sundresses, linen shirts knotted at the waist and silk scarves tied in the hair, while giving la dolce vita a gen Z makeover with jazzy beach co-ords of high-waisted shorts and matching bra tops.

Style icons range from Sophia Loren in off-the-shoulder white lace, photographed with an armful of artichokes, melons and, yes, tomatoes on the cover of her 1971 cookbook In the Kitchen With Love, to the actor Blake Lively, who last week posted a summer selfie in a bright red bikini, with matching manicure and heart-shaped sunglasses.

Barbiemania painted July pink, but tomato girl summer is turning August pomodoro red. Drawing on the Mediterranean summer aesthetic that has made Dolce & Gabbana a fashion powerhouse for four decades, tomato girl summer celebrates a world of Vespa scooters, handwritten blackboard menus and lazy lunches.

The scene was set for tomato girl summer by the second series of The White Lotus, filmed on location in Sicily. The show’s costume designer, Alex Bovaird, told Vogue that she “wanted to infuse a bit of Italy” into the clothes. Bovaird said Jennifer Coolidge’s fragile, tragicomic heroine, Tanya, “fancies herself as an Italian Brigitte Bardot” and is “trying to be the most romantic version of herself” on holiday. Both sentiments earmark Tanya as a tomato girl. But it was her co-star Meghann Fahy as Daphne – in high-waisted, gelato-swirl Pucci bikinis for the beach and a chic nautical-stripe Prada skirt with matching bra top for sightseeing – who showcased tomato girl style at its most desirable.

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If quiet luxury is awed worship of the lifestyles of the ultra-wealthy, tomato girl summer is a little more accessible. The taste level is resolutely aspirational, a soft-focus dream of picturesque village squares and aperitivi with a view. But the essentials – tomatoes from the market, coffee at a pavement cafe – are significantly more affordable than cashmere hoodies and private jet travel.

Tomato girl summer appears to be taking place in a temperate Mediterranean climate where it is sunny enough to be carefree, but cool enough for comfortable strolls. This could be read as the first shoots of cultural nostalgia for a region where idyllic summers are endangered by the climate emergency. In a year when Sicily has reached temperatures of 45C (113F), tomato girl summer reminisces about an era when a heatwave might have required an extra ice-cream, rather than medical aid.

Tomato girl summer has expanded beyond its TikTok origins and found devotees on Instagram, where the actor Elle Fanning recently triggered what could be seen as the beginning of the backlash. Fanning’s selfie, pale-skinned and dressed for urban rather than beach life, was accompanied by the caption “potato girl summer”.