Protect your skin and look cute at the beach in Mott 50 clothing, swimwear and activewear. Co-founder Anne Reilly shares her favorite pieces from the line and summer essentials.
Whether you’re on vacation at the beach or at a street festival in the city, it’s important to protect your skin from the sun’s harmful rays. Sunscreen is an obvious summer essential, but have you ever heard about or tried sun-protective clothing?
I recently had the chance to interview Anne Reilly for NS Magazine about her line Mott 50—which has been featured in Vogue, People StyleWatch, SELF and countless other mags—and her North Shore summer favorites.
I tried the clothes out for myself, and they’re super soft, lightweight and great-quality. I also love how versatile the line is, with everything from swimsuits to day-to-night maxi dresses and cute comfy leggings. I’ve even been wearing a few of the pieces to the office! So you can really dress them up or down.
Check out the full NS article here, and keep reading for more about Anne, the line, and what’s next for Mott 50.
What inspired you to create Mott 50?
Mott 50 is a line of sun-protective clothing. So that means that everything in the collection is UPF 50 and it blocks not only the harmful rays that cause burning, but also the rays that penetrate regular clothing—the rays that cause wrinkles and skin cancer and sunburn. Regular clothing has a UPF of only 5, so those harmful rays actually go through regular clothing. And I have a personal family history of skin cancer and melanoma, so that’s where my passion for the line came from.
At the same time, my business partner and I were realizing the shift in trends of people trying to be super tan, and people were kind of realizing that maybe covering up isn’t the worst thing. So we really decided to launch the line based on how people were responding to sun protection in general.
Since then we have expanded from just a women’s collection to children, athletics, and we have some other things in the works too to grow it even further.
What are your favorite pieces from the line for summer?
I am obsessed with the Sonja Swim Dress. It’s like a cover-up, but you can also wear it in and out of the water and to paddleboard in. It’s the best cover-up you can imagine; you can ruche up and down, so it’s flattering and it’s tight. It’s a really cool piece, it does really well for us.
I also love our long-sleeve bathing suits, it’s a one-piece bathing suit with sleeves. On our website it’s called the Mila, and it’s really fun and flattering.
What are your summer style essentials?
I obviously always have some Mott 50 piece on me—on my body or in my bag. I always have sunglasses as well, so I just got some new sunglasses from Oliver Peoples, and I actually got my kids the Babiators, they’re little baby aviators. I always have a hat; I love our straw hats, they’re amazing. And for sunscreen, I use this La Roche-Posay SPF 50 sunblock always on my face. For my kids, we have these amazing face wipes that have sunscreen on them called MD Moms, they’re amazing.
What’s next for Mott 50? Any fun new projects in the works this year?
We’ll have our resort collection coming out in October, we’re really excited about that, and we’re working on some really fun collaborations with sports teams and a celebrity as well.
What kinds of pieces will be in the resort collection?
The resort collection will be a brand-new line of women’s fashion, so it’ll be a new collection of sundresses and tunics and tops, and then a whole new swim collection as well. And then also a new children’s collection will be coming out for resort.
How would you describe sun-protective clothing to someone who’s never tried it before?
I would say that it’s just like regular clothing except that ours has the added benefit of being UPF 50, so it’s fashionable and cute and it’s also something that’s healthy and good for you. And you can’t tell the difference. I think that’s one of the big misconceptions—people are like, is it going to be too hot or am I going to look weird? And when you’re wearing our clothing you really wouldn’t know from looking at it that it has this added benefit, so it’s definitely a fun twist to the line.
Ready to try it out for yourself? You can shop Mott 50 online at Nordstorm and in select Nordstrom stores, plus it’s sold at over 200 local boutiques nationwide.
Lead photo by Keenan Reilly
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