Ready for Summer Fun in the Sun : Beachwear Items Are Hitting the Market in Waves
Jaded with your jams? Strung out on G-strings? If you’re looking for something new for summer of ‘87, the beachwear industry has got you covered--or uncovered--from head to toe.
The recent Action Sports Trade Expo at the Long Beach Convention Center offered a taste of what’s about to be hot for fun in the sun, and, America’s Cup T-shirts notwithstanding, designers and entrepreneurs seem to be bursting at the straps with ideas.
This summer, men will want to show off their Lui Lavas, which they’ll wrap turban- or sarong-style. Women will don provocative sideless bikinis. Both men and women will protect themselves from the sun’s hazardous rays with color-coordinated war paint, and both sexes will roll onto the beach in sandals resembling nothing so much as rocking chairs for your feet.
Attracted Attention
The original Lui Lava, a sarong-like, reversible print rectangle measuring 67 by 35 inches, attracted a fair amount of attention at the Expo. Despite the name, Ty Erquiaga of Balboa admits the product isn’t all that original.
“The Samoans have worn lava lavas for years,” Erquiaga explains. “We’ve just brought the custom to Southern California. When Brian (Clark) and I first came up with the idea, we sat around for a month conceiving all these ways to wrap ‘em. There are a million ways. The turban was one.
“They’re great around the house, know what I mean? You get out of the shower, you want to run out to the mailbox, so you put one on. . . . But it’s really targeted toward the beachwear market. You can wear them over swimwear or not. When the men in Samoa wear a lava lava, that’s all they wear.”
Versatility was key to many of the products. Also somewhat neo-Tonga in concept were designs from Sharpies San Diego. By rolling, tucking and twisting, Sharpies claims to offer five styles--from a one-piece bathing suit to a full-length dress--for the price of one item.
Beten Gav swimwear of Malibu offers a one-piece that can roll down into a bikini bottom and down again into a skirt. “The convertible swimsuit is definitely my hottest item this year,” designer Laurie Solomon says. “Beside the G-string, of course.”
The G-string may be Solomon’s hottest item, but Lakeview Terrace-based Why Things Burn may have something far hotter on its hands. If interest at the Expo was any indication, the coming wave in swimsuits--sideless bikinis--may hit like a tidal wave.
“Guys go nuts!” Kathy Dupont says of her product. “I think what people like about it is that it’s so tricky to the eye. They can’t understand why there’s nothing there. They’re asking: ‘Is it Velcro, is it tape, is there something invisible there? How’s it staying up?’ ”
The suit, available with a separate bra or as a halter or cross-back one-piecer, in fact stays on with form-fitting wire.
“It’s sexy but not trashy sexy. It’s clean. You put the right women in it, you’ve got it made,” says Dupont, who put a Raiders cheerleader in it at the Expo. The cameras didn’t stop clicking.
Somewhere along the other end of the spectrum, flesh-coverage-wise, Europe Anywear of Santa Ana offers the tri-kini, a two-piece suit with an additional waistband that can be taken off to avoid additional tan lines. The pattern designs continue, triptich-style, through the three pieces.
No matter what the suit, the with-it beach dweller will want to tie that special look together with colorful versions of zinc oxide for the face. “It’s as much fashion as it is function,” said Paul Robichaux, a Florida-based representative of Zinka of Garden Grove, “as much design as it is protection. Look at how people color-coordinate their ski outfits. Same thing is going to happen with this face stuff and swimwear. Everyone will be doing everything to match up those colors.”
Shoes for the Beach
The bottom line, of course, is shoes for the beach. And Jerry Pepper’s Chooz of Elk Grove will do just fine if matching fever hits as Robichaux predicts: Chooz offers a vinyl sandal with interchangeable laces in 15 colors, including lace laces. “Now you can go straight from the beach to the dance floor,” Pepper says.
Kix might be described as the platypus of footwear. This unusual sandal from Down Under goes one step beyond by combining an extra-wide sole, a radically arched wedge shape and a form-fitting foot bed. “The width is for the flotation factor,” explains Scott Middleton, branch manager in Edmonton, Alberta. (The U.S. office is in San Jose, Calif.)
“You walk on top of the sand, not sink down into it.” New to California, the shoe has been selling well in Australia for 12 years--”850,000 on the Gold Coast alone last year,” Middleton says--and now, the company has introduced infant sizes, also sure to be a winner: Everybody knows Kix are for kids.
