What to Wear in Lake Como: A Style Guide for Women Over 50
It’s late afternoon on the terrace at Villa d’Este. The boat that’s just brought you across from Bellagio has left a slow wake in the water below. The waiter has come and gone with the wine list. You’ve had a good look around at what the other women on the terrace are wearing. You’re quietly relieved that what you put on this morning is holding up.
Or, less happily, you’ve had a good look and realised the thing you packed for tonight isn’t quite going to work. Now you’re trying to work out whether to wear it anyway or head back to the room to change.
Both of these moments happen to women over 50 on Lake Como every summer. The lake sits in a specific category of Italian travel where the dressing question is more layered than most other destinations manage in a single afternoon. Bellagio in the morning has one dress code. The boat to Cernobbio has another. Villa d’Este at aperitivo hour has a third. The restaurant you’ve booked at Villa Serbelloni for dinner has its own logic entirely.
This is the framework for dressing across all of that without over-packing, without over-thinking and without arriving at Villa d’Este in shorts.
The boat-to-restaurant range is wider than you’d think
Lake Como isn’t a beach destination and isn’t quite a city break. It’s a specific category of its own. Your wardrobe has to handle a range of situations that don’t usually appear in the same trip.
You’ll spend time on the water: ferries between the towns, private boat transfers to hotels and aperitivo cruises at sunset. Boats are windy even in July. What feels breezy and pleasant on a hot day at the dock becomes properly cool halfway across the lake with the wind on your back.
You’ll walk on cobblestones. Bellagio, Varenna and Menaggio all have their old town centres, where the paving isn’t friendly to a high heel or a delicate sandal.
You’ll visit the villa gardens like Villa del Balbianello, Villa Melzi or Villa Carlotta. These are full day trips with a lot of walking, where the ground varies from paved paths to gravel to grass. What you wear has to work for that but also for the lunch you’ll want to have on the way back.
You’ll have aperitivo on hotel terraces. This is where Lake Como asks for more thought than most Italian destinations. Villa d’Este, Grand Hotel Tremezzo and Villa Serbelloni all sit at the top of that range. The atmosphere at aperitivo hour is smarter than casual. It’s not black tie, but it’s also not the sundress you wore for a market lunch.
You’ll have dinner in restaurants that expect you to have made an effort. Como restaurants at this level are dressier than their equivalents on the Amalfi coast or in Tuscany. Your dinner wardrobe needs to acknowledge this.
The pieces that survive across all five of these situations are the pieces that earn their place in your Lake Como capsule. Anything that only works for one of them is wasted space in you case.
The heat thinking
Lake Como in summer sits in an interesting climate range. The headline temperature can hit 32 or 33 degrees on a July afternoon, so it feels genuinely hot. But three factors soften that.
The lake generates a constant breeze that keeps the actual temperature at the water’s edge a few degrees below what the forecast says.
The mountains behind the lake create shade patterns that shift the temperature through the day. Bellagio, Varenna and the eastern shore lose direct sun in late afternoon much earlier than the western towns.
The interiors are noticeably air-conditioned. Hotel lounges, restaurants and the boats themselves are often distinctly cool once you’re inside.
The result is that a wardrobe built for headline heat alone will fail you. Your wardrobe needs to handle the transitions. The transitions look like this: warm outside at midday, cool on the boat at four, warm again at aperitivo and cool inside at dinner. The pieces that handle this well are the ones with layering built in: a silk shirt worn open over a vest, a fine merino cardigan or a silk scarf tied at the neck. A single sundress with no layering options won’t cope.
The other consideration is fabric weight. Very light linen creases badly and can feel too flimsy for the dressier evenings. A slightly heavier linen with structure, or a linen-silk blend, handles both the heat and the dressier moments. A cotton with a bit of body works better than a very fine cotton that loses shape by lunchtime.
The dressing logic that holds up at Villa d’Este
Villa d’Este is the reference point for Lake Como dressing because it sits at the top of the range. If your wardrobe works for aperitivo at Villa d’Este, it works for anywhere else you’ll go on the lake.
What Villa d’Este calls for isn’t formal in the black tie sense. It’s dressed in the way a true Italian aperitivo is dressed, which is a level or two above what most British and American women pack for a summer holiday.
The women you’ll see on the terrace at six in the evening are wearing well-cut trousers with silk shirts, midi skirts with silk camisoles or knee-length shift dresses with structured shoulders. Their shoes are leather sandals with a small heel or smart flats in leather. Their bags are thoughtful rather than casual and their jewellery, hair and general presentation all suggest they gave the evening some thought and made an effort.
None of this is intimidating. It just tells you what the dress code actually is. Villa d’Este at aperitivo isn’t a place to arrive in a beach cover-up over your swimsuit. It’s not a place for flip-flops or trainers. And it’s not a place where the “Italian riviera” clichés (Capri pants, straw hats, sailor stripes) quite land as intended.
What works is a considered outfit that would be appropriate for a dressier occasion at home, adapted for the heat. This might be a silk blouse over a well-cut trouser, a midi dress with real structure or a skirt with a silk top and a light jacket for when the sun goes down.
The trick isn’t to over-dress. It’s to pack pieces that look pulled-together rather than pieces that need a lot of styling effort to look right. In the heat of a Como afternoon, the pieces that require the least effort to look pulled-together are the pieces that will actually get worn.
The photograph-friendly colour palette
Lake Como is photographed more than almost any Italian destination and you’ll want those photographs. That means the palette matters more than it does elsewhere.
The landscape sets the parameters: deep blue water, dark green mountains, terracotta rooftops, pale stone villas, cypresses and oleanders in pink and coral. Most of the photograph advice you’ll read about Italy defaults to warm tones because those are the colours the landscape naturally sings with. But that isn’t the whole story.
What actually photographs beautifully against Como isn’t specifically warm colours. It’s muted, atmospheric tones rather than sharp bright ones. If your natural palette leans warm, that’s cream and ivory, soft camel and taupe, dusty rose, coral, terracotta, warm navy, olive and sage. If your natural palette leans cool, that’s dove grey, silver, soft blue-grey, blush pink with a cool base, muted lavender, sage (which works either way) and cool navy. Both palettes photograph beautifully against Como. The trick isn’t warm versus cool. It’s muted versus sharp.
The colours that don’t photograph as well against Como are the sharp ones: bright cool whites (they blow out in the light), harsh blacks (they feel heavy against the water) and acid neons that clash with the softly-lit landscape.
There’s nothing that says you can’t wear the colours you always wear. But it’s worth thinking about the muted version of your normal palette for this trip. Cream tends to look better than pure white. Dusty rose tends to look better than fuchsia. A soft blue tends to look better than a cobalt.
The advantage of thinking about your palette as one edited story (whichever undertone you sit in) is that it works across the range from boat to aperitivo to dinner without needing a second colour story.
The questions to ask before you pack
Before your Lake Como trip, four questions are worth thinking through.
What’s the balance between water time and villa time on your itinerary? A trip that’s mostly boats and hotel terraces needs different pieces from a trip that’s mostly walking and gardens.
What’s the dressiest evening on your calendar? Villa d’Este, Villa Serbelloni or a smart restaurant sets the top of the range. If you have a specific dinner booked, plan your wardrobe backwards from there.
How much walking are you going to do? If the answer is any real amount, your shoes need to be able to do it. That means leather sandals or smart flats, not a heeled sandal that will torture you by lunchtime.
What’s already in your wardrobe that works in a muted palette against a Como landscape? Almost certainly more than you think. Your capsule for Como should start with what you own before it goes anywhere near a shopping list.
Where to find more help
This is the framework I apply when I’m building a bespoke holiday wardrobe for a client – whatever the destination. The actual capsules, the ones with specific pieces and shoppable links and outfit combinations for your particular itinerary, are what the Holiday Wardrobe Collection delivers. Pieces designed for your specific dates, hotels and dress code expectations.
Travel capsules feature regularly in The Style Lounge as part of the monthly travel and strategic content. Members receive a fresh capsule each month plus weekly travel and strategic content in between (with suggested items all linked), at £30 a month. The destinations rotate through Italian cities, Mediterranean coast, French countryside and Greek islands and more.
Either way, the question for a Lake Como trip is rarely what to buy. What your wardrobe needs is editing, the right accessories and a palette shift to match the light. With the framework, packing for the lake stops feeling like guessing and starts feeling like something you’ve got the hang of.
Read the other posts in this series, How to Pack for a Mediterranean Cruise Over 50 and What To Wear In Tuscany: A Stylist’s Framework For Women Over 50.
