Whether you are a surfer or not you can’t fail to have noticed that surfer fashion appears to have become the standard in modern beach wear. The hight street clothing stores are full of flip flops, sandals, board shorts and hoodies, all developed from beach bum fashions.
Board shorts first hit the Californian west coast in the 1960s and have since skyrocketed in popularity. Earlier beach wear, for both men an women, had not been particularly stylish or practical with little to choose from in speedos and all in one swimming costumes that came to your thighs. Board shorts quickly became popular for many reasons, firstly because they were practical beach wear and secondly because they were really funky and cool looking even to the point where even if you weren’t going to the beach you would wear them around town.
Designed and developed by two surfers they made a style of shorts that was perfect for surfing and the beach. They designed board shorts to be practical, hard wearing and stylish, everything that currently available shorts weren’t. For example, board shorts were designed to be light, even when wet, and they were made to be fast drying. The shorts were designed to be comfortable, to be easy to move around in and not to chafe or rub when used in the water. Ultimately they designed the perfect, practical pair of shorts.
Not surprisingly board shorts soon caught on. The cool prints, the stylish yet practical design and the hard-wearing materials used made them popular with everyone from Brad Pitt to surfers one on the beach. And this doesn’t stop at men either, Quicksilver picked up on the massive market of the female surfer and developed their own brand of board shorts designed especially for women, you may have heard of it, Roxy. Another immensely popular brand is Animal Clothing with some outstanding board short prints.
Beachwear and surfwear has fast become a huge industry and everyone from tiny tots to old grannies can be seen wearing colourful board shorts to the beach. Its quite amusing to think that very few of the people who wear board shorts will ever actually stand on a surfboard let alone go surfing.
