BY DESIGN : Above Board : Gear: Sure, surfing trunks by Katin have changed. But some things have remained the same--including purists’ love for the shorts.

The original Kanvas by Katin surf trunks were heavy when wet, took hours to dry and sometimes caused an irritating rash in a rather delicate area. But they had the virtue of being indestructible.

And if a seam blew out after years of wear, Katin covered repairs with a lifetime guarantee. Local surfers had only to cross the sand to the inland shoulder of Pacific Coast Highway in Surfside, wrap on a towel, peel off their trunks and wait for a seamstress to stitch them up.

The trunks may have changed over the last 30 years, but they remain a favorite of the sport’s purists.

In the late ‘50s, function, not fashion, drove design. The knee-length Katins had to be loose enough for easy movement--not by today’s oversized standards, but by those of ‘50s and ‘60s, when men’s swimsuits resembled hot pants. And the fly was secured with the super-industrial snaps used for boat covers, except for the lace-up model, which featured 11 eyelets.

The trunks’ creators, “Captain” Walter Katin and his wife, Nancy, were in the business of making and selling boat covers in their Surfside shop, on the coast between Huntington Beach and Seal Beach. One day, a surfer requested a pair of trunks cut from canvas. It was 1958. By the time Hang Ten and Birdwell, among others, began doing similar trunks a few years later, Kanvas by Katin had established a loyal following.

Seamstress Sato Hughes, who had been with the Katins since she and her 4-year-old son, Glenn, immigrated from Japan in the mid-’50s, trained the ever-changing crew of Japanese women hired to make trunks. But regulars increasingly requested Sato’s handiwork, no matter how long it might take her to fill their orders.

“Katin board shorts became synonymous with surfing,” says Duke Edukas, owner of Surfside Sports in Newport Beach, who bought his first of many Katins in 1970. “Sato was part of that. Everybody knew her.”

He recalls the “positive vibe” of the shop: “Even as a teen-ager I could tell. . . . Glenn’s mom was a part of the family.”

So much so that the Katins, who had no children of their own, spent holidays with Sato and her son. Glenn went to work when his mom couldn’t get a sitter. When Nancy Katin died of emphysema complications in 1986 (Walter died in 1967), she bequeathed the business and the quarter-acre of prime real estate it sits on to her longtime employee and friend.

A nice ending?

Almost. “I begged Nancy not to leave it to me,” Sato recalls. “I’m not a businesswoman.”

The surfwear industry was peaking at the time, with kids even in Oklahoma striving for dude appeal. But Kanvas by Katin was wiping out, sinking deeper into the red. Nancy Katin had resisted not only mass production, fearing it would undermine quality, but also product changes. Nylon had failed as a lightweight substitute for canvas when the company first tested it in 1964, and, despite improvements, Katin would not reconsider it.

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Sato, left with an unwelcome promotion, brought in her son to help. Initially, the partnership proved rocky. “Her favorite saying was: ‘We never did that before,’ Glenn recalls. Eventually, though, she went along with his plans.

Glenn reinvented the 3,000-square-foot shop, creating the Katin Superstore and putting the books back in the black within a year. The front room, previously housing only a counter and a couch, was stocked with surf accessories, sandals and clothes by local designers. Former storage rooms became showrooms for boards and wet suits. A production and storage area remained, as did a mini kitchen and shower. (The latter, apparently, is a must in all true surf stores).

The most significant change came in 1990, with the decision to mass produce and distribute. For years, the Hugheses had refused buyout and investment offers from industry big guns. Instead, they chose to go with the owners of a then-fledgling snowboard apparel line based in Newport Beach--Rick Lohr, Bill Sharp and Mike Snyder of Burning Snow. Glenn knew Sharp from his former job as editor of Surfing magazine.

The collaboration had its conditions. Sato retained final say on production. “I told them to pay a little more for fabric if they have to, to keep the quality,” she says. And there was the daunting task of finding contractors that would honor the lifetime guarantee on seams.

More changes followed, including the pattern, which hadn’t been altered in 32 years. Supplex nylon finally replaced the canvas, and the signature snap fly was ousted by Velcro--once Sato found a quality Velcro strip.

The wholesale division, Katin USA, evolved into a full clothing collection, with shorts, pants, camp shirts and jackets. Finally, the logo was tweaked, with a single K where Kanvas by Katin used to be. That’s it, Sharp quickly adds. “It’s sacrilegious to mess too much with such an icon.”

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Indeed, some customers still ask for the old label patch (available on request), and orders for custom canvas trunks continue nonstop. Sato, 65, still personally fills such requests (“I like to see the customer happy about the fit, so I need to be here”), although at her son’s insistence she works only five days a week, not six. She threatened to fire him for that, she says with a mischievous smile.

Special requests, which can cost one-third more than off-the-rack styles priced at $30 to $40, come in all sizes, from a 56 1/2-inch waist to a matching set for a newborn and his dad.

Although longtime clients bring their sons and grandsons to the store, Katin is not a preserve for old-timers. “It’s the younger clientele who want this stuff,” says Surfside Sports’ Edukas. “It’s considered core gear.”