What Does Your Swimwear Say About You?
From the teeniest, tightest briefs to a saggy wetsuit and all the tailored trunks and printed pieces in between, here’s how your swim shorts can shape your summer
If you’re going away this summer, swimwear should be the first thing you pack in your luggage. What you wear in – or at least by – the water can go a long way to shaping your holiday as a whole. Are you looking for some action and adventure? If so, you’ll need swimmers that are up to the job. Perhaps the only activity you have in mind is covering the short distance between the lounger and the poolside bar. In which case, tailored trunks have you covered.
The swimwear a man wears can reveal a lot – perhaps too much. Here, we take a deep dive into swim shorts and where yours can take you (along with the places you don’t want to go).
01. The name isn’t Bond
Perhaps the biggest shift in the way we see men’s swimwear happened well away from a body of liquid (unless we’re including the cinema soda machine). All it took was Daniel Craig emerging from the Caribbean in 2006’s Casino Royale for the male gaze to flip back on itself. The sky-blue trunks he sports in the film might be hard to come by (a one-off by La Perla, they were sold at auction for £44,450 in 2012). However, Orlebar Brown has been 007’s standard-issue swimwear since Skyfall. TOM FORD, which tackles the special agent’s tailoring, is also no slouch when it comes to swimmers. Not everyone, though, follows the Bond actor’s intense fitness regimen, but our operative here hasn’t even set foot in the water. Instead, he’s holding his station, sprawled out under a parasol. He is, it has to be said, happy to let his fitted shorts do all the hard work.
02. The prince of prints
Menswear has taken a more adventurous turn in recent years and dipped a toe into prints. But like a towel spread across a sun lounger, swim shorts were there first. It stands to reason that swimwear naturally draws you out of your comfort zone, given that it puts in most of its hours when you’re in holiday mode. How far are you willing to go? Stripes are standard, wavy stripes fitting and a floral pattern would go with the lei. Vilebrequin is your go-to for aquatic animals. Atalaye, Onia and Frescobol Carioca all specialise in eye-catching designs, while Jacquemus has Côte d’Azur chic sewn up. However, this guy has jumped straight in at the deep end. Think clashing saturated colours on shorts so incandescent – almost radioactive – you need to slap on the SPF before pulling them out of the drawer. It’s a good job his fellow sunbathers thought to wear sunglasses.
03. The board gamer
Tubular. And that’s just the expanse of cloth enveloping each leg. This gnarly bro has opted for board shorts, the longer variant of swim shorts that has evolved to accommodate the surfing fraternity. Held firmly at the waist, thanks to a drawstring, and constructed from a quick-drying fabric, these rugged trunks are built to withstand the drop-ins and rip tides that are an occupational hazard for wave riders. Not that every pair of boardies today is designed with surfing in mind. Hartford, Peter Millar and even Isabel Marant go to great lengths to tap into the vibe of surf culture. Only baggies rarely come as voluminous as this character’s not-so-short shorts, which hang so low they’re at risk of tripping him up. And while they’ll no doubt catch some air, a wipeout is more likely.
04. The brief encounter
Less is more and that’s certainly the case when it comes to swimwear. It takes confidence to pull off swim shorts so short that they are no longer considered shorts but briefs. And the body of a Renaissance sculpture wouldn’t hurt, either. CDLP brings its knowhow with underwear into this field and somehow finds space for an internal pocket – with, unbelievably, enough room for a locker key – to its teeny trunks. Make sure this self-belief does not tip into intimidating other beach users. And that the swimwear leaves something to the imagination. This guy has put in the hours at the gym and shown dietary discipline. Now is his time to shine, but, like his trunks, his holiday is all too brief.
05. The fish out of open water
Try wild swimming, they said. It will bring you closer to nature. As it turns out, nature isn’t so keen. Now this guy’s stuck in sagging neoprene with frigid bog water filling up around his knees. A well-fitted wetsuit for open water should be snug and less stiff than one you’d wear for surfing. It will provide insulation – as well as buoyancy. This one is taking its owner down with it. The wrong-sized wetsuit is a real drag and wildly thrashing around isn’t so much the idea here. It means our error-prone adventurer has to be pulled out of the drink, coughing and spluttering. The only thing to show for his effort? A gastrointestinal illness, it later transpires. Next time, stick to the local lido.