Lookbook | California Trip 🌴

There’s something about California that gets under your skin the moment you arrive. Maybe it’s the quality of the light — that golden, almost cinematic glow that makes everything look like it belongs on a film reel. Maybe it’s the way the Pacific stretches out endlessly to the west, indifferent and magnificent. Or maybe it’s the simple fact that California contains multitudes: towering redwoods and scorched desert, surf towns and Silicon Valley, taco trucks and Michelin stars, all crammed into one improbable state. Whatever it is, it pulls you in, and it keeps you coming back.

This post is my attempt to bottle that feeling. Part travel diary, part style guide, part love letter to the most visually stunning state in the country — this is my California trip lookbook. Whether you’re planning your first visit or your fifteenth, I hope this gives you something to take with you.

The Vibe: What California Dressing Actually Means

Before we talk about specific looks and locations, let’s address the elephant in the room: California style is not one thing. It shifts dramatically depending on where you are. What you wear in San Francisco will look out of place in Palm Springs. What works in Malibu won’t necessarily translate to the streets of Los Feliz. The genius of dressing for a California road trip is learning to flex across all of those micro-climates and subcultures without losing your own thread of personal style.

The overarching philosophy, though, is ease. California dressing is built on the idea that clothes should feel like an extension of your body, not a performance. Linen that softens in the heat, denim that moves with you, sandals that have been broken in until they feel like a second skin. There’s a nonchalance to it that takes real effort to achieve — the classic California paradox.

For this trip, I leaned into a palette of warm neutrals, dusty terracotta, sun-bleached white, and deep ocean blue. It felt cohesive across very different backdrops, and it photographed beautifully in natural light, which California has in abundance.

Look 1: Landing in Los Angeles

Every California trip should start in Los Angeles, if only to let the city recalibrate your sense of scale. LA is enormous. It sprawls in every direction with an almost aggressive confidence, and the best way to meet it is on its own terms.

I landed in the late afternoon, which is the best time to arrive anywhere in California because the light is already doing something extraordinary. Everything is soaked in amber and the shadows grow long and theatrical. I walked out of LAX in a relaxed linen co-ord — wide-leg trousers and a matching short-sleeve shirt in a warm oat color — paired with white leather sneakers and a raffia tote that had lived in my bag since the previous summer.

The look photographed beautifully against the blur of palm trees and highway overpasses you pass on the drive from the airport into the city. It was comfortable enough for a transatlantic flight but put-together enough to walk straight into dinner at a Silver Lake restaurant with exposed brick walls and a natural wine list.

If you’re starting your trip in LA, give yourself at least three days. Walk the Venice Boardwalk in the early morning before the crowds arrive. Drive Mulholland Drive at dusk and pull over somewhere with a view of the city lights spreading out below you like scattered jewelry. Get an iced coffee from a café in Echo Park and sit outside long enough to feel the city’s rhythm.

Look 2: The Pacific Coast Highway

There is no drive in America more beautiful than the Pacific Coast Highway on a clear day, and I say this as someone who has driven Highway 1 in Big Sur, the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier, and the Blue Ridge Parkway in autumn. PCH is in a category of its own.

I drove northward from Santa Monica on a Tuesday morning when the traffic was manageable and the fog had burned off by nine. The ocean sat to my left the entire time, shifting between deep navy and brilliant turquoise depending on the depth and the angle of the light. Pelicans coasted overhead. The radio played something warm and unhurried.

For this kind of day — top down or windows open, salt in the air, nowhere to be in any particular hurry — I wore a vintage-washed denim jacket over a simple white fitted tank, high-waisted linen shorts in a dusty sage color, and flat leather sandals with minimal straps. Sunglasses are non-negotiable on PCH. I went with large tortoiseshell frames that felt appropriately retro for the landscape. A thin gold chain, hair pulled back loosely, and a scarf tied around the strap of my bag completed the look without overcomplicating it.

The stops along PCH deserve their own itinerary. Malibu for a swim and lunch at a seafood spot perched directly above the water. The small beach towns north of Ventura where time seems to have stopped sometime around 1975 and the fish tacos are the best you’ll eat anywhere. Point Mugu, where the mountains crash directly into the sea and the light turns everything mythological.

Look 3: Big Sur

Nothing prepares you for Big Sur. You’ve seen the photographs, you’ve watched the Instagram reels, you know intellectually that it is one of the most spectacular stretches of coastline on the planet. And then you drive into it and realize that every image you’ve ever seen has flattened something three-dimensional into two, has compressed something vast into something small.

Big Sur requires a look that can handle both a long hike and a candlelit dinner at a rustic inn, because that’s exactly what you’ll find yourself doing. I wore a fitted ribbed knit in a deep terracotta, tucked into wide straight-leg jeans in a medium wash, with white-soled hiking sneakers that looked clean enough to carry into a restaurant. Over the top I layered a loose, slightly oversized sherpa-lined denim jacket because Big Sur gets cold fast, especially once the sun drops.

The hike to McWay Falls is short — barely more than half a mile out and back — but it delivers one of the most astonishing views in California: a waterfall tumbling directly onto a deserted sandy beach, ringed by forest and granite cliffs, the sea a shade of blue that doesn’t seem real. Get there early in the morning and you’ll likely have the viewing platform nearly to yourself.

For dinner, I stayed at a small inn on a clifftop and ate local abalone with a glass of Monterey Pinot Noir while the sun melted into the Pacific. Bring layers for the evenings. No matter how warm the day has been, Big Sur at night reminds you that it belongs to the ocean.

Look 4: San Francisco

San Francisco is the one city in California that truly requires you to rethink your packing strategy. The famous Karl the Fog doesn’t care that it’s July. It will roll in off the bay in the middle of the afternoon and drop the temperature fifteen degrees in the time it takes you to walk from one end of Dolores Park to the other.

The city rewards layering. I wore a cream silk slip dress as a base, then built on top of it with a structured mid-length camel coat that I’d honestly almost left at home because it seemed too heavy. Reader, I wore it every single day. Beneath the dress, thick ribbed tights in a warm brown. Ankle boots in a cognac leather that walked beautifully on the hilly streets without sacrificing style.

San Francisco is a walking city, or at least it rewards the people who treat it as one. Walk across the Golden Gate Bridge in the morning when the fog is still threading through the cables and the light is diffuse and silver. Spend an afternoon in the Mission, eating your way through its incredible restaurant and café scene and looking at the murals in Clarion Alley that are some of the most vital public art in the country. Take the ferry to Sausalito on a clear afternoon and look back at the city from the water, which is still one of the best views available anywhere.

The style in San Francisco skews more eclectic and intellectual than the rest of California. Tech-casual mixes with vintage finds and genuine high fashion in a way that works because nobody seems particularly self-conscious about what they’re wearing. The city is too interesting for people to spend much time worrying about clothes, which paradoxically creates an environment where interesting clothes feel completely at home.

Look 5: Palm Springs

After the fog and hills of San Francisco, Palm Springs is a full sensory reset. You drive east from LA through the Inland Empire and the landscape shifts — the suburbs thin out, the desert begins, and then suddenly you’re surrounded by mountains on three sides and the Coachella Valley opens up before you. The heat is real. In summer it can feel aggressive. But in the shoulder seasons — October through April — it’s a warm, dry, clarifying kind of heat that makes everything feel possible.

Palm Springs is glamour. It is mid-century modern architecture, turquoise swimming pools, pink neon against a desert sky at dusk, men and women who have retired and decided to spend their days looking spectacular. The style here is intentional and theatrical in the best way. Caftans. Wide-brimmed hats with drama. White everything. Sunglasses that are essentially sculpture.

I leaned in. A long, loose white linen dress that hit the ankle and moved beautifully in the desert breeze. Flat sandals in gold leather. Stacked gold cuff bracelets. A wide-brimmed straw hat that made every outdoor photograph look like a vintage Italian Vogue shoot. Coral lips for evening.

Eat lunch by a pool. Rent a bike and ride through neighborhoods lined with Eichler homes and Neutra designs, pausing at every house that makes you want to press your face against the glass. Drive out to Joshua Tree — it’s forty minutes from Palm Springs and a different world entirely, all spiky silhouettes and alien rock formations and a sky at night so full of stars it feels like a ceiling.

Look 6: Wine Country

A California lookbook without wine country would be incomplete. Napa and Sonoma sit about an hour north of San Francisco and are completely different in character. Napa is polished and grand, all estate wineries and manicured vineyard rows and restaurants that require reservations made months in advance. Sonoma is warmer and more relaxed, more farmer’s market than five-star, though the wine is every bit as extraordinary.

I preferred Sonoma for the atmosphere, though I drove through Napa just to see the landscape and because the Drive at Stag’s Leap is genuinely one of the most beautiful short stretches of road in the world.

For wine country, I chose a midi dress in a deep burgundy with a subtle floral print — the color felt appropriately thematic without being too on-the-nose — paired with low block-heeled mules in a cognac leather and a lightweight knit cardigan in cream that I could peel off when the afternoon sun peaked. Gold hoops, minimal jewelry, a small shoulder bag that fit a tasting notebook and not much else.

The light in wine country in the late afternoon is something painters have been chasing for decades. The golden hour hits the vineyard rows at a low angle and turns everything rich and amber. If you’re going to take photographs anywhere on a California trip, reserve your best light for the vineyards of Sonoma in October.

Packing Essentials for a California Road Trip

A few things that made this trip run more smoothly, and that I’d pack again without hesitation.

A good quality linen piece in a neutral — it breathes in the heat, layers in the cold, and photographs well against almost every backdrop California offers. White sneakers that are clean and versatile. A structured jacket or coat for San Francisco and the coast. One statement piece — a caftan for Palm Springs, a silk slip for a wine country dinner, whatever signals that you made an effort. A wide-brimmed hat for the desert and the wine country afternoons. Good sunglasses, not as an afterthought. A small crossbody bag for city days and a tote that holds everything for road days.

And comfortable walking shoes. California is best experienced on foot whenever possible. The best discoveries — the taqueria down an alley in Boyle Heights, the hidden beach below the PCH, the mural you almost missed on a Mission side street — tend to happen when you’ve slowed down enough to notice things.

A Final Word on California

California is the kind of place that spoils you. Once you’ve seen the light over the Pacific at golden hour, once you’ve eaten a fish taco at a roadside stand with the ocean fifty feet away, once you’ve stood at the edge of the continent and felt the continent end — you carry a little of that with you. It changes the calibration of what you expect from a place.

Come for the landscapes. Come for the food, which is among the best in the world and rooted in a produce culture that will make you question every salad you’ve eaten before. Come for the towns that feel like their own private worlds. Come for the drive, always the drive, with the windows down and the mountains or the ocean or the desert shifting past you.

Come dressed for all of it. California will meet you wherever you are. 🌴