Cardiff Bay Day Parties: What to Wear from 3pm to Ten
Two day parties, one road, same Saturday. On bank holiday Saturday, 29 August, Country Club took over Tiger Yard on Porth Teigr Way: outdoors, three until ten,...
Two day parties, one road, same Saturday. On bank holiday Saturday, 29 August, Country Club took over Tiger Yard on Porth Teigr Way: outdoors, three until ten, line dancing, cowboy hats handed out at the door, sold out before the day arrived. A couple of minutes' walk away, same CF10 4GA postcode, PURE R&B ran three until half ten at Lo Lounge, with nineties and noughties R&B and hip hop on an outdoor dancefloor, street food, and tickets from a fiver.
Same postcode, same seven hours of Welsh sky, two dress codes with nothing in common. One crowd in denim and cowboy boots. The other in satin and gold hoops. Both of them still outside at half eight, when the temperature goes.
If you missed both, the run isn't over. Tiger Yard has All Day Indie on Saturday 5 September, three until ten, the Cardiff Italian Festival on Sunday 20 September, midday until six, then Oktoberfest across four Saturdays in October: the 3rd, 10th, 17th and 24th, midday until ten. Same yard, same water, colder every time. So this is less about one Saturday in August than about the format, which Cardiff has now built a whole season out of.
“A day party is two outfits pretending to be one.”
The brief: outdoors, 3pm until ten, next to the water
Seven hours is the number that matters, more than the music and more than the dress code. You arrive in daylight with sunglasses on and you leave in the dark, and nothing about what you're wearing changes in between.
Cardiff in September sits around eighteen degrees in the afternoon and eleven overnight, and the Bay adds wind on top, because there's nothing between Porth Teigr and the water to stop it. The drop lands around eight, faster than you'd think, and it's why day parties finish with half the crowd standing very still with their arms folded.
The ground is the other thing. This is a yard, not a field: hard surface, no give, nowhere to sit down. Nothing sinks, which is the good news, and nothing softens either, which is the rest of it. Whatever you bring in you're holding for seven hours, so pack like someone who has to dance with it.
The Bay palette
Grey water, blue denim, and the two dress codes that turned up on the same road.
Bay water
#46606E
Barrage grey
#A8AFB3
Solo cup red
#C43B33
Mid-wash denim
#6C8AB4
Tan leather
#A9763F
Gold hoop
#CDA84C
Two dress codes, two minutes apart
Country Club is western, and western is the easiest theme going to overshoot. Hat, fringing, boots, buckle, and you've crossed from an outfit into an outfit with a concept. It also hands the hats out at the door, so the one accessory everybody will be wearing by six is the one you don't need to plan. Take the reference as far as a boot, or some fringe on a bag, and let the rest of it be your own clothes.
PURE R&B pulls the other way. The reference is Aaliyah, Destiny's Child, an Usher video that's aged better than it should have. Satin, a going-out top, denim that actually fits, gold at the ears. Club dressing, done at four in the afternoon, in a yard.
Where the two meet is the weather, and the weather doesn't care which party you picked. Both crowds are outside until ten. So build from four pieces and change the styling, not the strategy.
The boots are the piece worth the money out of all four. They carry the western reference on their own, so nothing else in the outfit has to, and they're the only footwear here that handles seven hours of concrete and the walk back up Lloyd George Avenue afterwards. A satin top does the R&B end of it in one move, and looks like a different top tucked into jeans than it does under a jacket at nine.
What to wear when it drops at eight
This is the piece that decides whether you stay for the last hour. Build the outfit underneath a jacket rather than adding one once you're already cold, because a layer that arrives as a rescue always looks like one. A denim jacket handles the western side and costs you nothing. A leather or faux-leather bomber does the R&B side, and sits better over satin than denim does.
What you carry, you carry all day
Everything you bring stays on you: phone, card, keys, somebody else's phone at some point in the evening. Which rules out anything you have to hold, and rules in the strap. There's nowhere to put a drink down either, so one hand is spoken for from about four o'clock.
Five things worth deciding before you leave the house
Dress for eight, not four
Nobody has ever been let down by an outfit at four in the afternoon. Pick what still works once the light goes and the wind comes off the water, then wear that in the sun for the first five hours.
Let the hat be free
Country Club hands cowboy hats out at the door. By six, every hat in the yard is the same hat. Take the western reference as far as your boots and leave it there, because an outfit built around a giveaway has nothing left to say once everyone's got one.
Flat, closed, already broken in
Concrete is unforgiving in a different way to grass. Nothing sinks, but nothing gives either, and the heel that's fine for town on a Saturday is a very long seven hours here.
Wear the bag, don't hold it
Drink in one hand, phone in the other, and nowhere to put either down.
Wind is the Bay's weather, not rain
There's nothing between the yard and the water, so anything unweighted spends the evening being rearranged for you. A skirt with some structure in it, or a hemline you're not managing all night.
The next ones in the Bay
All Day Indie at Tiger Yard on Saturday 5 September, three until ten. The Cardiff Italian Festival on Sunday 20 September, midday until six. Oktoberfest on the 3rd, 10th, 17th and 24th of October, midday until ten. The dress code moves every time. The brief underneath it doesn't: seven hours, outdoors, next to water that gets colder every week.
Prices and stock move week to week on all of this, so if something in the rails is right, it's right now rather than the weekend after next.