Source : the age
In the early European summer, on the glittering peninsula of Cap d’Antibes, I found myself reclining on a sun lounger next to two 40-year-old women from Melbourne. One was in a long-term relationship, the other was newly single and, together, they were taking a two-week jaunt along the French Riviera before a final stop in Paris for shopping, pain au chocolat and dinner at Hotel Costes.
“I’d rather travel with a girlfriend than my partner; we’re so much more aligned,” said the former, her eyes glimmering behind huge Dior sunglasses.
“Would I spend my day doing this with a man?” asked the other, gesturing towards her goblet of spritz, Sally Hepworth novel and the sweep of lapis-blue sea.
Unknowingly, the pair were embarking on a Hot Divorcee Summer, the rising cultural trend centred on women’s radical freedom and the pleasures of putting oneself first. After a stay at Hotel Belles Rives, the legendary art deco haunt in Juan-les-Pins, they were headed for the beach clubs of St Tropez, the perfumeries of Grasse and “nowhere with a golf course”.
Figurative rather than literal, Hot Divorcee Summer is less about marital status than a mood and an energy: untethered, unbothered and unencumbered by a man’s needs or opinions (or anyone’s needs and opinions for that matter, perhaps for the first time in a woman’s life).
It’s Jennifer Coolidge as Tanya in The White Lotus, wafting through Sicily in a silk headscarf and caftan, trailing oversized luggage, romantic delusions and a sweet whiff of chaos. It’s Kristin Scott Thomas as Fiona in Four Weddings and a Funeral, if she’d given up waiting for Charles, booked herself a suite at La Mamounia, Marrakesh, and developed a taste for textile weaving. And it’s Nicole Kidman as herself, lounging poolside at Portofino’s Splendido this July, then island-hopping with Zoe Saldana in Greece, dressed almost exclusively in white linen and crochet.
Comedian Tatty Macleod was credited with putting a name to the feeling when she shared her vision for a season of glamorous, carefree fun on social media in April. “I’m so over Brat summer … [I’d describe myself as] more of a Divorcee Summer. I want it to look like I belong on a yacht. I’ve got a couple of houses, various dead husbands, I’ve got a toy boy in the bathroom. I just travel and spend,” she purred like a 1930s starlet beneath a floppy, pink sunhat.
An obnoxiously large hat might be the visual calling card for the Hot Divorcee Summer, but it’s where the aesthetic parameters end. The Divorcee’s proverbial hotness, as she decamps to somewhere with better weather and fewer obligations, is an attitude and a state of mind. She might go a week without washing her hair, letting the greys do as they please, as she drifts around the Balearic island of Formentera and orders lobster before noon.
She’s equally at liberty, though, to slip to the hotel spa for a skin-tightening treatment. Self-indulgence is a prerequisite for the Hot Divorcee, but the pleasures are entirely self-prescribed: the best hotel suite, a faintly ridiculous wellness ritual, a pottery class that would have been vetoed by every previous travel companion.
“This is about women seizing the moment and not waiting for someone else to be available to experience the places they want to go,” says Jules Perowne, founder and chief executive of global luxury travel communications consultancy Perowne International.
Those places span continents, cultures and price points, but all offer a taste of the good life in one form or another. Take the island of Sardinia, which has something of a split personality.
Costa Smeralda in the north-east has been an exclusive summer playground since the 1960s, one where megayachts jostle for space in the marinas and old money meets Hollywood meets Silicon Valley over long lunches and DJ sets. Yet beyond that enclave it’s rugged and rural, a succession of sugar-white beaches where Italian families practise the art of dolce far niente.
For the Hot Divorcee, this makes for an appealing combination: a boat trip through secluded coves on waters so vivid they render filters redundant; languid hours under a beach umbrella; bowls of homemade pasta and scoops of dripping gelato; an evening dressed up for dinner in Porto Cervo; a stay somewhere special, like Cala di Volpe, the rustically lavish icon that once starred in a Bond film (The Spy Who Loved Me), or the less flashy Le Dune Piscinas eco resort. In 2027, Rocco Forte Costa Smeralda and Mandarin Oriental will both open on the north-east coast, too.
Or she might venture inland, where Sardinia’s famously long-lived nonnas offer ageing advice to rival any wellness or longevity retreat.
An important caveat: Hot Divorcee Summer is not a self-improvement exercise. Eating, praying and loving are all welcome, but they have to happen organically, and there’s no obligation to return home transformed.
Nor is it a traditional girls’ trip with shared itineraries, group decisions and expectations of collective revelry. If partying is on the agenda, it leans much more sophisticated than a rhinestone-crusted hen’s do or big, boisterous birthday. No organised fun, no matching outfits, no tiaras, no bottles announced with sparklers.
To that end, L’Aventure and Le Bus Palladium, two recently opened five-star boutique hotels in Paris, boast louche underground nightclubs and live music venues – so you can make a night of it or not, without having to organise a ride home.
The new Nomade Temple in Madrid was built around experiences, too, with a speakeasy and club inspired by the city’s 1980s cultural awakening, along with a daily roster of workshops and events designed to bring people together: psychedelic breathwork sessions, social saunas, run clubs, sketch classes, vermouth and flamenco afternoons.
For Perowne, the Hot Divorcee Summer calls for destinations where being alone feels unremarkable. “The hotels getting it right understand that a woman travelling solo does not want to be tucked into a corner table with a book,” she explains. “At Storfjord Hotel in Norway, the new Boathouse restaurant has no tables for one. Everyone sits at a single long table while the chef cooks over open flames, and dinner becomes a supper party. At Wildland’s Killiehuntly Farmhouse in Scotland there’s no room service and no menu. Guests eat together, whatever the cook has made from the estate that day. You arrive a stranger and leave having had the best conversation of your year.”
Shifts in the cultural landscape make this particular brand of women’s travel especially appealing. In Australia, 49,158 divorces were granted in 2025, a 4 per cent increase from 2024, and the average female divorcee is 44, with decades of adventures still ahead of her.
Throw in the Great Wealth Transfer, in which it’s expected up to $5.4 trillion will pass between Australian generations over the next two decades – much of it into the pockets and wallets of Gen X and Millennials – and Hot Divorcee Summer begins to look like more than a buzzy catchphrase.
Meanwhile, women are questioning the assumption that romantic relationships should be the organising principle of their lives; “decentring men” has become a rallying cry. In the US, Pew Research Centre found that just 35 per cent of single women were actively looking for dates or a relationship.
Instead, their next great romance may be with a place. In April 2026, Google reported that search interest in “solo travel” had hit an all-time high, and “women solo travel” was at a 15-year peak. In a recent survey by the company Solo Female Travelers, 85 per cent of respondents cited freedom and flexibility as a reason for travelling alone, while 76 per cent wanted time to relax, indulge and prioritise themselves.
“Ever since MONA opened in Hobart, I’d always wanted to go with a partner,” says Megan McTavish, a social strategist from the Gold Coast. “I never went with my ex-husband, but still hoped I’d find someone to go with while dating. Then one day I woke up and thought, ‘What am I waiting around for?’ I looked at the money I’d saved and asked myself what I’d do if I was with a man. I would have booked a fancy hotel and a bougie, romantic meal. So I decided to do it myself, after 15 years of waiting.”
After a few hours browsing the gallery at her own pace, McTavish, 41, took herself to lunch at avant-garde fine-diner Faro. “It was invigorating,” she says. “I got the degustation and focused on every morsel, with no awkward conversation with whoever would have been sitting opposite me.”
Since then, McTavish has taken herself to Melbourne solo for martinis and chocolate mousse at Maison Batard, followed by a facial at Mecca and a luxurious sleep in a king bed at 1Hotel, as well as to Byron Bay.
“These trips make life feel like it’s worth living,” says McTavish, noting that the idea of a holiday romance or catching the male gaze doesn’t register for her. “I’m celibate.”
One day, she hopes to visit Malta and the Maldives – “I really want to go and take those romantic couples photos by myself” – but as a single mother of one, she’s content for now with an unapologetic mini-break.
“There’s a follow-on effect from doing this, even if it’s just a two-day trip that you’ve saved and budgeted for,” says McTavish. “A lot of women have subconsciously learnt to accept crumbs in our lives, so this is about setting the bar high for ourselves. On the surface it might look like a lot of fancy lunches and beauty treatments, but it’s also about treating yourself so well that you’ll never accept the bare minimum or mistreatment from anyone else.”
While the Hot Divorcee Summer was enjoying its debut season, another social trend was gathering momentum: the Year of the Hobby, a renewed enthusiasm for pursuits that have little to do with work or productivity.
The two cultural currents intersect in a Venn diagram, an overlap populated by retreats for learning, making and doing, set against beautiful, far-flung backdrops. Think textile-making in Guatemala, the dyeing technique of shibori in Japan and basket-weaving in Spain’s Mallorca, all led by local artisans via Thread Caravan. Or the Marnie Rays women’s surf retreat in Ericeira, Portugal, or sensory immersion meets contemporary arts with Bonfire in Iceland.
Perhaps the most resonant subcategory here is the reading retreat, because what says “I’m putting myself first” like sun-lounging in silence with a group of like-minded women, tearing through pages of Nancy Mitford, Elizabeth Strout or whichever author sets your imagination alight?
Megan Christopher founded Ladies Who Lit, a travelling book club, three years ago and now hosts up to 75 retreats in villas, castles, ranches and even yachts across 15 countries every year. Each retreat revolves around a loose schedule of reading, conversation and leisurely meals, with optional activities and plenty of quiet time – although a recent retreat in Seville, Spain, culminated in a raucous night of karaoke.
“Obviously, the women who come on our retreats are readers, but I think what they’re actually drawn to is the time and space we give them to just be them,” says Christopher. “They’re not somebody’s wife; they’re not somebody’s mum. They don’t need to think about what they’re having for dinner, or if the kids’ uniforms have been washed. Once we remove all those elements, they get a chance to not only relax but to be themselves, potentially for the first time ever as an adult.”
For 2027, the line-up includes the first Australian retreat in the Byron Bay hinterland – set in the Californian-cool country estate Sun Ranch – and a cowboy-themed one in Vancouver, Canada.
Christopher says newly divorced or separated women comprise a significant subset of the Ladies Who Lit community. “There’s probably at least one guest on every trip who’s in that situation,” she adds.
Of course, there’s an inherent contradiction in the Hot Divorcee label. Taken literally, it puts a gloss on something that, for most women, is anything but glamorous. Divorce can take an enormous emotional and financial toll, and the freedom to spend lavishly on a holiday is hardly universal.
You needn’t be rich to partake, countered comedian Tatty Macleod when breaking down the trend. “Ideally, it’s champagne in the Med, but if it’s cava in a paddling pool that will also do, babe.”
What a Hot Divorcee Summer does offer, regardless of age, relationship status or circumstance, is an invitation not to take oneself too seriously, a healthy disregard for convention, a zest for growing older and a reframing of what endings can mean. And it can restore a sense of possibility. Never mind the giant hat, that’s the greatest souvenir of all.
NEW STAYS THAT CAPTURE THE DIVORCEE SUMMER SPIRIT
DELANO, MIAMI BEACH, US
Once the heart of South Beach’s 1990s social scene, the legendary Delano has emerged from a six-year renovation with its glamour intact but its priorities slightly rearranged. Wellness has joined the party, without quite replacing it. From $799 a night. See delanohotels.com/miami-beach
CASA BONAVITA, ATTARD, MALTA
The Mediterranean island’s most stylish new stay features unabashedly pretty interiors (the Folly suite is the stuff of slumber party dreams) and the warmth of a family home. It’s the kind of place where company might be found without being sought. From $895 a night. See casabonavita.com
CASA MARGARITA GUEST HOUSE, MEXICO CITY, MEXICO
Originally the home of Mexican writer Margarita Quijano – who hosted salons for leading thinkers, particularly women – this restored 1902 mansion feels fitting for the independently minded. Stay for the book clubs and poetry gatherings, and the lively cafes, restaurants and galleries on the doorstep. From $500 a night. See casamargaritamexico.com
THE WHALE, NAROOMA, NSW
This new coastal motel by Merivale has all the makings of a free-spirited escape when an overseas jaunt isn’t on the cards: boho design, a retro magnesium pool, bespoke vinyl selection and a Queen Chow restaurant on site. From $440 a night. See merivale.com
THE PACKING LIST
A vintage silk scarf
Tied around the neck or knotted under the chin for boat rides.
A copy of Strangers by Belle Burden
The year’s most talked-about divorce memoir.
An exceptionally good black one-piece swimsuit
The kind that will last for the next 10 summers. See Eres or Canvs Bottega.
A wide-brimmed sunhat
Inconvenient on aeroplanes, excellent everywhere else.
Venetian slippers
For making an otherwise ordinary outfit look like something worn by an eccentric Italian aristocrat. See Piedaterre or Le Monde Beryl.
A repurposed silver cigarette case
Inside: a hotel matchbook and the telephone number of an admirer, scrawled on a receipt.
A Mary Poppins bag
To house all of the above. It could be a raffia basket picked up at a local market, a canvas tote from Hotel Il Pellicano or a battered Goyard Saint Louis GM.
