Must-Haves for Your Summer Vacation Bag

You need a vacation.

Your skin is the color of sour cream and your nerves have about the same consistency. You crunched budgets through most of winter and worked so hard you missed most of spring to arrive on the heels of Memorial Day without a stylish clue.

Before you go and pack that same old Jansport backpack and head for the shore, here is a collection of summer essentials to fill the chicest of beach bags.

The Sound

	Carla Bruni/Downtown Music LLC

Carla Bruni - No Promises

It wasn't love at first sound, as Carla Bruni's No Promises hit stores late last summer to whispered acclaim amongst a cult-like French following. But the second album from the former supermodel and French First Lady is making a resurgence in fashionable iPods(AAPL Quote).

Best enjoyed with a glass of rosé and the oily glow of freshly applied tanning oil, songs like Those Dancing Days Are Gone are serenaded in broken English that sound like forlorn love letters from a French chanteuse who laid, heartbroken, in the summer sun.

The Lotion

	Men's Swimsuit/Tomas Meier

Korres Body Milk

If you've summered on any of the Greek Islands, the smell of Korres Bath Products is synonymous with aromatic showers following long afternoons tucked away on the shores of the Aegean. Korres began as a homeopathic pharmacy in Athens offering a naturalistic approach to skincare based on Greek traditions utilizing indigenous plants like primrose, olives, chamomile and basil.

With a new U.S. boutique in NYC's SoHo, the product line is comprised of fully natural ingredients free of synthetic fillers like mineral oil or propylene glycol found in most American moisturizers. Korres After-Sun Citrus Body Milk is our favorite of the tanning products, a soothing liquid cream with tingling lemony scent that sooths post-sun skin.