What Lauren Santo Domingo Packs for a Desert Music Festival

Lauren Santo Domingo sets the style bar high. Her Nina Ricci wedding dress by Olivier Theyskens is still the topic of many a heated Vogue.com conversation, and she routinely appears in our street style roundups from New York and Paris. Needless to say, the Moda Operandi cofounder and Vogue contributing editor is well versed in packing for travel around the world. Her latest trip, though, was not to Paris or Cartagena—it was to Marfa, Texas, to take in the Marfa Myths music festival. What brings a jet-setter to the desert music festival, you ask? Santo Domingo’s husband, Andrés, co-owns Mexican Summer, the indie record label that also co-sponsors the fest. “Hailu Mergia was epic,” she says of the Ethiopian funk star who kicked off the festival with an electric performance, adding, “and so was Connan Mockasin.”

But before she could take in the music, she had but one day to repack her Anya Hindmarch suitcases for Marfa after Paris Fashion Week. “The only carryover from my Paris Fashion Week suitcase was a Nina Ricci peacoat,” she tells Vogue.com, admitting, “There is really no fashion scene here. It’s not like Glastonbury or Coachella. Honestly, no one cares what you’re wearing.” Instead of the suiting and stilettos she packs for Paris, she chose simple essentials for the weekend in Texas: slip-on shoes for the plane ride there, Tabitha Simmons buckle boots for the desert landscape, skinny jeans, and a Reformation sweatshirt with “LSD” emblazoned across the front. Don’t call it normcore, though—Santo Domingo also packed a Coco Chanel–esque straw boater hat to combat the desert sun and intarsia sweater with Mexican-inspired patterns for shopping trips to Marfa’s artsy boutiques Mirth, Freda, and Mano. The message: A statement sweater is always a good idea.