What does a woman wear to the menswear shows?

Borrow from the boys, flat shoes and glam-free: our menswear editor Helen Seamons reveals what a woman should wear to this weekend’s London Collections: Men


Helen Seamons … fashion dilemmas. Photograph: Helen Seamons

Anyone who says they don’t give any thought to what they wear to fashion week is lying. As the Guardian and Observer’s menswear editor, I have spent the past nine years – or 18 seasons, in fashion terms – at the menswear shows. For three weeks, twice a year, I have to look good among the most stylish men in the world, who this season are likely to wear classic navy cashmere or a a fresh from-the-catwalk top stitched Prada coat.

FacebookTwitterPinterestexpand Helen Seamons for Mens Collection special Helen Seamons Photograph: Helen Seamons

In some ways, my wardrobe choices, and the first impression they create, have never been more important. No one wants to sit next to the world’s top menswear buyers and stylists looking like they’re not up to speed on the wardrobe front. These are the men and women (but mostly men this week) who can tell a Céline blouse from a Zara knock-off at 20 paces. Looking like I’ve made the right amount of effort (not too little, not too much) is important.

FacebookTwitterPinterestexpand Diane Keaton Photograph: Fotos International/Getty Images

But to the wider fashion world, I am invisible. The scrum of street style snappers, bloggers and reporters at shows are only interested in what the men are wearing – I could be in a sack or haute couture and it wouldn’t muster a lone tweet. So I have a specific but important audience – friends, contacts and colleagues – coupled with an enjoyable anonymity.

What does this mean for my wardrobe? Generally, a lot of borrowing from the boys, Diane Keaton-style, which is a menswear no brainer. A tailored wool coat, jeans, flats, cashmere knitwear (incidentally, mine is bought from the Cos menswear dept in extra-small) and lots of navy and grey.
FacebookTwitterPinterestexpand Cos Milano-knit jumper Cos Photograph: Cos

I always size up Dries van Noten for any cross-over pieces – like this floral tote, which would be handy for carrying a change of shoes on the days when I do wearheels , and I love Alexander Wang for womenswear with a menswear twist. Thismen’s shawl, which I have worn all Christmas, will come in handy when I’m waiting for a show to start in a freezing disused railway station/church/carpark.
FacebookTwitterPinterestexpand Dries Van Noten Floral tote bag DVN Photograph: DVN

I adapt this for each city. London has the most relaxed dress code of the three – it feels like fashion’s weekend – and it takes place on home turf, which means flat shoes all week, likely trainers (but they have to be the right trainers; Nike, New Balance or Stan Smiths). Milan is more of a power-meeting Monday; all the big brands are here, and you can wear a heel, largely thanks to the ratio of cabs over walking. In Paris I feel a responsibility to up my game, being in the spiritual home of fashion, which is my excuse for habitually packing six coats and ten pairs of shoes for four days, anyway.

I once made the mistake of going too glam at the menswear shows and I felt like an idiot all day. I won’t be that mistake again this season but I will be looking out for menswear-inspired looks to co-opt for my own wardrobe. Borrowing from the boys is literally a perk of the job.

Read more

Christian Dior’s Raf Simons constructs a 1960s vision of the 21st century

A model presents a creation by Belgian designer Raf Simons as part of his haute couture spring summer 2015 fashion show for French fashion house Christian Dior in Paris. Photograph: Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters

Considering that Christian Dior’s most recent financial results showed a 13.4% sales rise to €747m (£560m), in the first six months of last year, we may assume that the designer Raf Simons had free rein to show Monday’s haute couture collection in any Paris venue he chose.

So it is worth taking a moment to consider why he chose to erect an indoor building site – a freshly painted, plushly carpeted one – in the garden of a shuttered 18th-century museum in central Paris.

FacebookTwitterPinterestexpand People arrive to attend Christian Dior 2015 haute couture spring-summer collection fashion show in Paris. Photograph: Patrick Kovarik /AFP/Getty Images

Since arriving at Dior in 2012, Simons has been on a mission to make the historic house relevant and contemporary. This show venue was a very New Dior conceit, paying respect to the rich history of Paris – and then immediately deconstructing it. Arriving at the gates of the Musée Rodin, currently closed for refurbishment, guests first of all had to navigate the security gates that are a new and sober fixture on the Paris fashion week scene. (In an attempt to maintain standards of glamour, Dior had replaced the grey plastic trays in which handbags are placed to be screened with pristine white boxes.)

Once cleared, guests walked through the shell of the museum – elegant but tired, with the parquet under wraps and the tall windows shuttered – and along the gravel paths to the end of the long formal gardens, where a giant white box was marked, simply, “Dior”. Inside, the venue revealed itself to be a spiral of glossy white scaffolding, with a catwalk snaking upwards in circles, carpeted in soft pink and walled with mirrors.

FacebookTwitterPinterestexpand Models present creations by Belgian designer Raf Simons as part of his haute couture spring summer 2015 fashion show. Photograph: Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters

A utopian construction site, in the grounds of a historic museum which will soon be refurbished and reborn: that, right there, was the key brand message of this haute couture show.

The Dior woman, says Simons, is both “exquisitely decorated and disruptive”. The clothes were a mischievous layering of past and present: not simply nostalgic or straightforwardly futuristic, but rather a 1960s vision of the 21st century.

Transparent plastic rain macs were self-consciously sci-fi, but cut with a retro, swingy line and demure bracelet-length sleeves. A tattoo-printed long-sleeved mesh bodysuit worn under a short-sleeved shift gave a double-take-worthy effect, as if a prim young 1950s wife was sporting two full sleeves of tattoos.

FacebookTwitterPinterestexpand A model presents a creation by Belgian designer Raf Simons as part of his haute couture spring summer 2015 fashion show. Photograph: Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters

This was a world where not even a ponytail – that simplest, most girlish of hairstyles – was what it seemed.

Look closely, and you noticed that the hair on the models’ scalps ended where it wrapped around the top of a small metal ring suspended from the back of their heads, while the hair hanging down their backs was an entirely separate portion of fake hair, attached to the bottom of the metal ring. It seemed a neat joke about how the level of beauty and elegance achieved on the haute couture catwalks requires from the viewer a suspension of disbelief.

“Periods of time are conflated,” Simons explained of the collection. He berated himself for having previously been guilty of “always thinking of the future … I was always anti-romanticising the past. But the past can be beautiful too. There is a sense of the romance of the 50s, with the experimentation of the 60s and the liberation of the 70sin the collection.”

FacebookTwitterPinterestexpand A model walks the runway during the Christian Dior haute couture show in Paris displaying the collection by Raf Simons. Photograph: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

David Bowie’s swooping Moonage Daydream played on the soundtrack, and a series of sequinned and striped catsuits referenced the Yansai Yamamoto outfits that Bowie wore on his 1973 Aladdin Sane tour, seen in the 2013 V&A exhibition.

The boldness of the fashion message was echoed in what was notably absent from a collection beamed around the world just as actors and stylists are starting to pick out dresses for Oscar night. Three strapless, full-skirted gowns were the only classic eveningwear pieces in a 55-piece lineup of knitted all-in-ones, full-length latex boots and psychedelic stripes. This was cutting edge, not comfort zone

Read more

Versace does what Versace does best as Paris haute couture shows begin

The collection with which Donatella Versace opened the Paris haute couture shows on Sunday night was sexy and glamorous.
The dresses were long and form-fitting, with slim naked slivers peeled off across the body, as if Donatella had attacked her gowns with a lemon zester.
The models included, star of the original Wonderbra posters, along with fellow 90s name Amber Valletta and current Vogue cover girl Jourdan Dunn.
Hollywood’s power mother-daughter duo, Kate Hudson and Goldie Hawn, sat in the front row.

FacebookTwitterPinterestexpand Models present creations by Italian designer Donatella Versace. Photograph: Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters
And in case anyone was still puzzling over the general message, Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing accompanied the finale.
Versace is entirely uncomplicated, which is either the label’s strength or weakness, depending on how you take your brands.
It has staked an unrivalled claim on the public consciousness: ask the average consumer to close their eyes and picture a Versace dress, and the image they see is likely to be sharper than for any other brand.
Everyone knows what Versace stands for. This strength and simplicity of image are commercial gold, in the marketing of perfume and makeup.

FacebookTwitterPinterestexpand A model presents a creation by Italian fashion designer Donatella Versace. Photograph: Miguel Medina /AFP/Getty Images

But for those who like their pop culture with a wink, the absence of irony in the Versace world makes it problematically unsophisticated.

Yet in the 15 years that Donatella Versace has helmed the family label – through some troubled financial rapids, into calm and buoyant waters – the sheer force of her personality and determination has added an emotional power to her signature sucker-punch dresses.

It is worth repeating the fact: Donatella Versace opened the Paris haute couture shows.

The highest, most elite branch of the fashion industry, long dominated by French men, has given pride of place to an Italian woman who has survived personal trauma and drug addiction but now, at 59, is going strong.

FacebookTwitterPinterestexpand Kate Hudson and Goldie Hawn attend the Versace show. Photograph: Bertrand Rindoff Petroff/Getty Images

Among the limp fairytale narratives of haute couture – where, to judge by the dresses, female fulfilment is a matter of embroidery and weddings – the Jackie Collins plot of the Versace empire is compelling.

Before the show, Donatella Versace described the collection as being “about cut, and the curves of a woman’s body … when we started the collection, I said I wanted no straight lines at all. Every seam is curved”.

The show opened with two black trouser suits which could have come from no other design house: so tight that the spotlights caught each hipbone separately, as the models stalked the catwalk.

FacebookTwitterPinterestexpand Italian fashion designer Donatella Versace greets the audience. Photograph: Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images

Every curve was lovingly highlighted and flashes of skin winked from cut-out shoulders, from plunging necklines, even from split-front flared trousers.
After the briefest nod to daywear, in the form of one long-sleeved dress, the collection segued into a masterclass of red carpet dressing guaranteed to suck up the oxygen of publicity at any event.
There was, as Donatella promised, not a straight seam on the catwalk – and the winding, undulating, sinuous cut combined with an elongated silhouette gave a mesmerising effect of cat-stretched hourglass curves.

Read more

Sorry, Gwyneth Paltrow, but steaming your vagina is a bad idea

Actor Gwyneth Paltrow has excelled herself. Her “popular lifestyle website” goop.com carries a recommendation that women steam-clean their vaginas for extra energy, to rebalance female hormones and for a squeaky clean uterus:
The real golden ticket here is the Mugwort V-Steam. You sit on what is essentially a mini-throne, and a combination of infrared and mugwort steam cleanses your uterus, et al.”

V-Steam is not just any old steam douche, it is an energetic release that balances female hormone levels. It’s available at the Tikkun Spa in Santa Monica. “If you’re in LA, you have to do it.” Which makes me grateful that I’m not. 

To give steamed vagina the seriousness it doesn’t deserve, let’s see if there’s any science behind the extravagant claims. Mugwort, for instance, is an aromatic herb used in Chinese traditional medicine and as a food flavouring. In South Korea it’s used in rice cakes and soup. And in LA it’s used to steam vaginas.

Vaginal steams help women. That you haven't heard of something doesn't make it suspect
Katinka Locascio

Infrared is electromagnetic radiation with longer wavelength than visible light and it makes up about half of all sunlight. Hot objects like the sun emit infrared energy, which is absorbed by black matte surfaces and reflected by light, shiny surfaces. The vagina is more matt black than shiny white so will absorb heat to an extent.

But heating the vagina isn’t necessary; it’s kept at body temperature (37C), which is perfect. Any hotter and unwanted bacteria and yeasts such as candida will proliferate, normal enzymes start to get sluggish and increased blood flow due to the heat will make the vagina itchy.

The water vapour in steam isn’t a good idea either. The vagina is kept naturally well lubricated with oily substances. Water isn’t hydrating to cells. On the contrary, water can wash away natural oils, leaving the vagina poorly lubricated and more prone to cuts and irritation. Thrush, caused by an overgrowth of candida, thrives on warm, damp conditions, so is a definite risk from steaming.

All of our orifices, including ears, nose, anus and vagina, are essentially self- cleaning. The pH of the vagina, natural mix of bacteria that live in it, mucus plug that sits at the top of the vagina and lining of the womb all work harmoniously and effectively together to ensure that bugs from the outside world generally don’t invade upwards from the vagina to the fallopian tubes. Infection can happen from sexually transmitted infections, contraceptive coils or other surgical procedures. But mostly it’s a very well-run system.

The claim that the steam clean could balance hormones is irrational. Hormones are produced by organs such as the brain and ovaries, travel in the bloodstream and have specific effects on their target organs. Steaming the vagina cannot possibly impact on hormone levels. I urge you to put the kettle away, throw the mugwort in some soup and consciously uncouple from this website.

Read more

Experience: cold-water swimming gave me amnesia

Last summer my wife Barbara and I were on holiday in Tobermory, Mull. We’d hired a car and for our first outing toured round the north of the island, spotting golden eagles before going to Calgary Bay for lunch. It’s very beautiful, with a white sand beach and a sea that begged to be swum in. My 12-year-old grandson Adriani and I made plans to come back the next day and do just that.

And so we did, apparently. I know nothing about it except what I’ve been told. Adriani had his wetsuit on, but I didn’t have mine with me and was in swimming trunks. I had this theory that the Gulf Stream would make the water warm. I now know, having consulted an atlas, that Ireland deflects the warm water well to the north of Mull.

Barbara tells me that after about 10 minutes I came out of the water, walked up to her and said: “I don’t know where I am or how I got here.” I knew who she and Adriani were, and who I was, but I didn’t know the day, month or even the year.

Barbara thought I’d had a stroke and called for an ambulance. I was able to reason that it couldn’t be a stroke because there was no paralysis, and I could dry myself and get dressed; but I was unable to form new memories. This meant that I operated like a goldfish on a short-term memory loop, “coming to” every 90 seconds or so and asking the same questions and reaching the same conclusions each time. This drove Barbara and Adriani mad.

The ambulance took me to the little hospital in Craignure and from there to the ferry. I was installed in the sick room until it docked in Oban and an ambulance took me to the hospital. I left a trail of bemusement behind me.

But when I saw the consultant, he was very clear in his diagnosis. I had not had a stroke; I was suffering from transient global amnesia. The condition usually affects older men and the most common triggers are immersion in cold water and sex. Because of its rarity and unpredictability, it has been little studied. The doctor said the episode would last eight to 10 hours, after which I would gradually improve; there would be no long-term effects and no likelihood of a return if I kept out of cold water. He offered to keep me in overnight but said it wasn’t necessary – and he was right, as the amnesia began to fade.

The first memories I formed were a snapshot of the doctor’s face and the feeling of the strap round my forehead in the scanner. On the ferry back, I was still asking the same questions again and again, each time remembering a little bit more. It was like coming round after an anaesthetic – I was disoriented and felt distanced from everything.

Back in the taxi to Tobermory, I felt normal. The taxi driver, listening to me explain what had happened to me again and again over the 35-minute journey, disagreed. Barbara left me outside the B&B with strict instructions to Adriani to keep an eye on me while the driver took her to the cash point. Once I was in the rear-view mirror, he said: “Now’s your chance, lass. Tell him you’ve never seen him before.” Luckily, she didn’t take him up on the offer.

The next morning I was exhausted but operating normally. A few days later we stopped at a pub where I was embraced by a paramedic in uniform. “Well, how are you?” she asked. “Well, who are you?” I replied. I didn’t recognise her at all but did reason she must be the one who had fetched me from Calgary Bay. She was off to do the ice bucket challenge. Very brave of her, I thought, considering what she’d seen happen to me.

Looking back, fully recovered, I find the whole episode hilarious. But it had been scary for Barbara, who’d been wondering whether this was the beginning of the end for me. We met when studying cognitive psychology, so I’m a little disappointed that we missed the opportunity to take notes. I’m almost tempted to dive in again with a research team standing by – but missing one day from my life is enough for me.

Read more

The best price comparison travel websites - Travel days

Fare comparison sites have come into their own during the recession. Cut the cost of your holiday with our guide to the best, for hotels, flights, car hire and insurance

Over the last few years there has been a proliferation of comparison sites on the web. And these sites have really come into their own of late since they can do the hard work for you, for various travel services, allowing you to forgo the lengthy process of hopping from site to site to find the cheapest flights, insurance, hotel deals and car hire options. We've trawled through the web to find the best in show.

If you think a comparison website should be added to the list, email your suggestion to benji.lanyado@guardian.co.uk - and we'll put it to the test. But the perceived glaring omissions are for a reason: sites like Expedia, Thomson, andTravelocity may search for plenty of options in their respective fields, but the comparison sites examine them against what their competitors are churning out. For example, many websites collate thousands of hotel prices - such as Late Rooms, Hotels.com, Skoosh - but Trivago (our pick, below) will compare the results of all of these sites, side by side.

Flights

1. Gone are the days when one had to toggle 19 browser windows to work out which airline got you to Barcelona the cheapest. Kayak.com scans the web for low-cost flights, comparing the majority of the world's budget and full-fare airlines. It also has an excellent "fare tracker" service that allows you to choose your route and wait for the best prices to pop up - alerting you when they have dropped.

2. Skyscanner.net does more or less the same. It has a nice function that allows you to choose the dates that you want to travel, and then it will find the cheapest places you can fly to with its "show me anywhere function" option.

3. The flightchecker at Moneysavingexpert.com works the other way round, allowing you to choose your destination, and then look for the cheapest dates to travel. Unfortunately, it only searches nine budget airlines in Europe, but covers a lot of ground.

4. Not all airlines and airports are covered by the above sites. To fill in any gaps, and to find obscure airlines and airports all over the world, you may want to do it manually. Flycheapo.com will tell you who flies from where, and destinations you can get to on a budget airline from anywhere in Europe. Who-flies-where.com has a slightly larger scope, and the disastrously organised Attitudetravel.com covers pretty much everywhere you can think of, if you can be bothered to search through it.

Hotels

1. A lot of people know about sites likeLate Rooms and hotelclub.com, but there is now a search tier above them, collating the results of hundreds of hotel websites and operators, including the biggies - Expedia, Skoosh etc. We found three hotel comparison sites to be the best of the bunch, and having plugged them all with dozens of different destinations, Trivago.co.ukcame out with the cheapest rooms, just. But in this field we recommend that you try all three.

2. Hotelly.com was a close second, but had two distinctive one-ups on the others. First, it has videos of roughly half of the hotels it lists. Second, it is the only hotel comparison site that specifies whether or not tax has been included in the stated price.

3. Hotelscombined.com is only slightly more expensive, generally, but has its perks too. It allows you to sort results by star-rating, meaning you can scan through the five-stars for the cheapest, then the four-stars, and so on. It also performs well on finding good deals on a specific hotel (a function the others also do) - allowing you to choose, say, The Manhattan Sheraton, and then wait for it to find the cheapest room rates on the web for a specified date.

Car hire

1. We did a survey of the leading car hire comparison sites, finding their prices for 10 different locations worldwide, and found that Traveljungle.co.uk generally found the cheapest rates.

2. Car-hire-centre.co.uk was next in the pecking order, and was particularly good in immediately comparing storage space, air conditioning and number of doors within the search results.

3. Comparecarhire.co.uk was almost as cheap as the other two, and well worth checking. Annoyingly, it makes you specify your exact pickup location, rather than allowing you just to specify a city.

4. Interestingly, all three companies seemed to regularly spew outHolidayautos.co.uk as the cheapest option.

Travel insurance

1. Travelsupermarket.com seems to be the cheapest around, tracking hundreds of different companies to find the best deal. Simply enter the dates of your trip, your age, and it shows you the cheapest ... broken down into medical cover, personal liability and other variables. Can also link you to your cheapest annual cover very easily.

2. Squaremouth.co.uk does roughly the same, and is very helpful in explaining the process as you go along. It also allows you to compare two policies side by side. However, if you want to find out the full policy wordings they have to email you the further information.

3. Comparethemarket.com has reacted quickly to the current economic climate, and features a visible indicator as to whether or not a policy covers you for airline insolvency.

Packages

1. Comparison websites are, in their nature, best for those looking to build a holiday themselves. But if you want to compare prices on a package, in a rather paltry field there is a clear frontrunner. Travelsupermarket.com's holiday comparison function scans hundreds of operators - including the bigger ones such as Thomson and Thomas Cook- and finds the cheapest options.

Read more

Eastern Caribbean's top 10 beach accommodation on a budget: from Antigua to the British Virgin Islands - Travel days

Galley Bay Cottages, Antigua

Tucked away on a hillside in a quiet area of north-west Antigua – and a stone's throw from Giorgio Armani's cliffside estate – Galley Bay Cottages are a rare find on an island where pricey all-inclusives and super-high-end resorts seem to dominate. These four one- and two-bedroom cottages have great sea views from their wooden verandas; interiors have unfussy antiques, nautical prints and romantically mosquito-netted beds. Marco, the cheerful Italian manager who lives on site, will collect guests from the airport and direct them to a company that delivers hire cars to the cottages. A car is a must for exploring this somewhat sprawling island, and handy for picking up groceries to cook in the cottage kitchens – taking taxis will put a good dent in your budget.



Antigua is famous for its 365 beaches – one, the brochures say, for every day of the year – but the closest to the cottages, a quiet, sweeping arc of sand known as Galley Bay, is just a three-minute walk down the hill.  The surf can get a little high here, so watch the kids.

• +1 268 764 9920, antiguanice.com, one and two-bedroom cottages from around £100 a night

Catamaran Hotel, Antigua

This small, friendly hotel is smack on the beach, on the island's buzzing southern coast. The 14 self-catering rooms are almost like studio apartments, with kitchens in the corners, and are simply and brightly furnished, with aircon, television and daily cleaning – even of your dirty dishes. The upstairs rooms have especially nice views of the marina and boats in Falmouth Harbour. The on-site restaurant is only open for special events and doesn't serve breakfast, but a short walk down the jetty is Cambusa, an Italian restaurant on the seafront serving freshly caught fish. The village of English Harbour, a magnet for the sailing set, is a few minutes' taxi ride away, and has a smattering of lively restaurants and bars, often full of festive crews from the mega-yachts nearby. The beach at the Catamaran is small, but a perfect spot to sit with a book and a cocktail.
• +1 268 460 1036, catamaran-antigua.com, doubles from about £95

Barbuda Cottages, Barbuda

The long, uninterrupted stretches of pink-tinged sand lining this island are among the most stunning on the planet, and much of the time there's not a soul on them. This cottage (the owner is planning to build more, hence the plural name) is a few steps from the beach, with a fantastic, sweeping view of the Caribbean from its elevated deck. Three bedrooms and two bathrooms make it comfortable for families or couples. The grocery stores in Codrington, Barbuda's quiet main village, are fairly limited, so guests often stock up on basics beforehand in Antigua, about 30 miles away (daily flights; ferry five days a week). There are only a few options for dining on this sleepy island, but one, Uncle Roddy's, is about 50m from the cottage – almost like having an in-house chef. Roddy's Barbuda Smash, with rum and coconut juice, manages to enhance the sunsets, and the restaurant's locally caught lobster or snapper are delicious options if you tire of the cottage's kitchen. Barbuda currently has three beachfront resorts – Coco Point Lodge, Lighthouse Bay Resort and North Beach – but they cost at least £320 a night, making the cottage a relative bargain. Bring repellent because the sand flies can be aggressive, especially after a rain shower, although the cottage owners spray the area regularly.
• +1 268 722 3050, barbudacottages.com, sleeps six from about £1,600 a week

Guavaberry Spring Bay, Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands

The rocks that give so much character to the beaches of the Baths and Spring Bay on Virgin Gorda, the third-largest of the British Virgin Islands, run through the Guavaberry resort too. Great boulders, covered in bougainvillea and night-blooming sirius cactus, surge from the rising ground on both sides of the quiet road near the south of the island. In among them stand 20 cottages, each with kitchen, living room, barbecue and lovely outside space, and one, two or three bedrooms. A small central area has shop, internet, laundry, books, snorkelling gear and regulars who gather to shoot the breeze. But life centres on the delightful beach and its superb sand and sea, framed by the famous boulders, jumbled on one another to create nooks, sun traps and explorable caves. There are bars and restaurants within walking distance.
• +1 284 495 5227, guavaberryspringbay.com, from $150 (£100) a night. Virgin Gorda is reached from Antigua (served by British Airways, Virgin) via Beef Island off Tortola (on local airline LIAT), and a ferry

Mongoose Apartments, Tortola, British Virgin Islands

Beach bars stand shoulder to shoulder for 300m on Cane Garden Bay, the liveliest beach on Tortola, so there is plenty of choice of loungers, watersports, live music and happy hours. You may want to avoid the beach on cruise ship day, when it heaves, but in the evening it can be your own – for truly spectacular views of the sun setting between Jost van Dyke and distant St Thomas. Mongoose Apartments are hidden in greenery just three minutes from the sand, with six one-bedroom apartments in a block surrounded by palms, each with kitchen and balcony. They're simple, comfortable, and the welcome's friendly.
• +1 284 495 4421, mongooseapartments.com, from $145. Reach the BVI from Antigua, as above

The Horny Toad Guesthouse, St Maarten

Here's a conundrum. How it is that one of the best beaches on an island which has bought determinedly into tourism has no big hotels? Presumably it's because the airport is too close. The result is that Simpson Bay, superb mile-long curve of blinding-white sand and surreal blue water, has just a few small places to stay, of which the most sympathetic is the unlikely named Horny Toad. It was once the island governor's home and inside you can still feel a sense of that – but it has been adapted and added to, to create eight one- and two-bedroom beach apartments with rattan furniture and bright floral fabrics. There's plenty of sand to walk, a couple of beach bars to retire to and, of course, superb, swimmable sea.
• +1 721 545 4323, thtgh.com, from $118 a night. Reach St Maarten from Antigua (as before) or direct from Amsterdam (KLM) and Paris (Air France)

Auberge de Terre Neuve, St Barts

 Flamands beach. Photograph: Alamy

Finding somewhere inexpensive to stay in St Barts is an issue – the Auberge de Terre Neuve offers some of the best value out there. And it's just a short (but steep) walk from Flamands beach, which has magnificent waves that roll in off the reefs, clapping and hissing, and then racing up the sand in protruding fingers of surf. There is so much sand, and it's so soft, that walking along the beach becomes aerobic exercise. Terre Neuve is a mainly residential area and the nine pink and white painted apartments of the auberge stand in a line within a small compound. They are modern and quite simple, but have a kitchenette, air-con and a large balcony with views over the coast and the beach.
• +590 590 27 75 32, auberge-de-terre-neuve.com, from €95 (£82) a night. Reach St Barts via Antigua (as before) and then on local airline Tradewinds, or via St Maarten

Hurricane Cove Bungalows, Nevis

The view from Nevis across the Narrows to St Kitts is one of the loveliest in the Caribbean, and Hurricane Cove has the best of it. The greens of the other island's mountainous spine stand out beautifully against the blues of tropical sea and sky. Hurricane Cove is a hillside collection of 12 self-contained bungalows with one, two (mainly) and three bedrooms. The wooden cottages have an almost alpine feel – with a bit of Caribbean gingerbread trim – and facilities include a laundry and a pool. But they're also a three-minute walk from the delightful, protected Oualie beach, with calm water, a beach bar and sports including scuba diving, windsurfing and mountain biking.
• +1 869 469 9462, hurricanecove.com, from $125. Reach Nevis via St Kitts (twice weekly on British Airways), or via Antigua (as before), from where it is a 20-minute hop with LIAT

Lloyd's Guest House, Anguilla

A West Indian home from home, this family business has been going for years, since before Anguilla's "revolution" in 1967, and eventual secession from St Kitts. Lloyds sits at the top of the hill above The Valley (Anguilla's diminutive capital), five minutes' walk from Crocus Bay. It's very much a guesthouse, with just a handful of brightly painted bedrooms around a sitting room and a dining room where everyone eats their Anguillian home-cooked breakfast together at one table. The family has another business – da'Vida, a bar and restaurant down on the beach. Crocus Bay has shallow water and is protected by steep walls of rock, so it is calm and a sun trap. And if you don't want to order dinner at Lloyd's, you can linger beyond sunset and shell out for dinner at the main restaurant, which has a modern twist on Caribbean fare.
• +1 264 497 2351, lloyds.ai, doubles $85. Reach Anguilla (on LIAT) via Antigua (as before)

Timothy Beach Resort, St Kitts

 Timothy beach. Photograph: Peter Phipp/Alamy

Don't confuse the two sides of Frigate Bay, St Kitts' best known beach. Frigate Bay North has most of the hotels, but it is also the Atlantic side, where the tradewinds and rollers come in off the ocean. The side to be on is Frigate Bay South, where the waves merely lap in the soporific heat and the dark sand can be so hot you can barely walk barefoot. Timothy Beach has pride of place just above all this – on the hillside at the corner of the bay, its restaurant right above the sand. Set in modern, sky-blue blocks, the 60 or so rooms are quite large and are decorated with Caribbean pastels on white. But of course you will gravitate to the beach, where the bars and watersports concessionaires stand shoulder to shoulder beneath the palms, humming by day and then heaving by night – particularly on Friday and Saturday.
• +1869 465 8597, timothybeach.com, from US$125. St Kitts has two direct flights a week (BA) from the UK

• Georgina Gustin and James Henderson, editor of the Definitive Caribbean Guides, from £6.99. Their Antigua e-guide is published on Tuesday. James Henderson is also co-founder of Travelspinner.com, a website connecting travellers to specialist tour operators and travel companies

Read more