The Top 6 Designer Vacation Plans, Plus What They Should Pack

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

It's summertime and, for some, the living is easy. But for designers, summer can mean busy, busy business hours as they prepare for fall runways. So to find out who's taking a breather, Forbes collected vacation plans from everyone from Chris Benz to Rachel Zoe to Rachel Comey. After the jump, find our top six favorite getaways and, because we're always here to help, a few packing items to help lighten the load.

1. Lela Rose: "My family and I are headed to Copenhagen and Stockholm to go on a little food tourism jaunt, eating at three of the top 50 restaurants in the world. We are eating at NOMA (#1) and Geranium (#49) in Copenhagen as well as biking all around the city. Copenhagen is the absolute best biking city, as it is incredibly accessible. I am dying to see how it all works. We are then heading to Stockholm for a few days and are eating our final blowout meal at Mathias Dahlgren (#41). After all that travel, we will head out to Jackson Hole, Wyoming where we spend many of our summers mountain biking, hiking, tubing, and just enjoying the mountain air."

Necessary packing item: Expandable/retractable pants, aka leggings.

2. Temple St. Clair: "Right now I'm sitting at JFK ready to board a flight to Geneva. My husband and I have visits planned with my goldsmiths in northern Italy and Florence. We like to explore and to leave some things to chance so we often don't fly to our ultimate destination. We pick a place, rent a car, and take it as it comes. We love the mountains, so thought a bit of alpine summertime would be refreshing. We'll decide which route south to take when we land tomorrow. We'll see what charming villages we find along the way and pick one to stay in on our way south to take care of business."

Necessary packing item: Hot to cold sweater like this alpaca blend boucle from M. Patmos.

3. Chris Benz: The prospect of summer is always exciting but the reality always falls a little flat. We're super busy working on the spring collection, and I'll be going to Tokyo in July to check in on my stores and projects there. Before I know it, it's already September!

Necessary packing items: Tissues for your wah-cation.

4. Rachel Zoe: "My dream for the summer is to sit on the beach between Malibu and the Hamptons with my son and husband?That's pure heaven!"

Necessary packing items: A map that shows there are no beaches between Malibu and the Hamptons. Just middle America. Also, these bi-coastal summer wedges.

5. Rachel Comey: "I am going to a ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and planning on doing a lot of snake river swimming, hot springs soaking, hiking, bull riding, wearing denim and tall hats."

Necessary packing item: These Western-style Frye boots to go with all the denim and yee-hawing.

6. Yeardley Smith of Marchez Vous: "Learn swing dancing, consider sky-diving, holiday on an island with pink sand and a palm tree, take every other Wednesday off, skinny dip as often as possible, gleefully tend my garden: The Simpsons and Marchez Vous and laugh ‘til my guts hurt!"

Necessary packing item: These.

· From Michael Bastian To Rachel Zoe To Chris Benz, Designers Share Their Summer Plans [Forbes]
· Frank's Guide to Holiday Weekend Packing [Racked]