Yahoo Finance Swim Shorts Have Learnt to Walk on Dry Land
If, like me, you routinely self-flagellate by browsing absurd villas in countries that won't allow entry to noxious British passports, then come on in. The water's real toxic. Because, not only does this pointless exercise cause cortisol levels to hit NHS-junior-doctor-driving-against-oncoming-traffic-on-the-San-Diego-Freeway stage, but it also serves a reminder of our summer gear. Most of that stuff never got its time to shine. Pour one out for the billowy, sexy, lotharibro shirt that was meant for Barcelona. The same for the Seventies porno sunglasses. Oh, and the wavy swim shorts for that cancelled week-long mad one by a big fat piscineeeee.
There's nothing to say you can't wear all of this to dinners and dates and the inevitable despairing at England's performance in the Euros. But it just doesn't feel the same. This island, for all its weird charm, isn't well built for holidays. Or hot weather. There are very few pools in London, or anywhere else for that matter. Brighton Beach hosts a historical reenactment of the last days of Rome most weekends. Other seaside towns are too north or too underfunded or too both to compete with those on the continent. The mad garms are to stay in storage then. Until 2022, Ibiza.
Don't pack away the swim shorts, though. You can keep the swim shorts. In the last couple of years, the best sort of swim shorts have gone Darwinian. They've finally learnt to walk on dry land. So where you'd once wear them solely around the pool (and maybe to a nearby bar at which your body's cry for H2O is flatly ignored), you can now wear them everywhere else.
Yes, you can partly thank the casualisation of menswear at large. Looking a bit schlubby and comfy and beach bummy is a hangover from the whole sleazeball thing a few summers back – and it looks fun. Now, though, brands (and the creative directors behind them) are buttressing swim shorts with all the features they need for life on dry land. They're designed for more than just swimming.
Take True Tribe, for instance. As the brainchild of Frenchman Alexandre Sundberg, the low-key-hi-performance marque is an amalgamation of activewear, swimwear and just straight up good menswear. It was intentionally made to serve all three. "I went hiking in some swim short samples I'd sorted with some Portuguese suppliers as a bit of a side project," he told Esquire last year. "The whole philosophy of True Tribe emerged from there: you just need shorts and a backpack and the bare minimum." The end result is a multifunctional short that can swim, run, walk and show off with aplomb.
And lest we forget the Patagonia Baggies. They're yet another all-rounder that took last summer by storm, and New York magazine's The Cut even went as far as to compare them to "an Air Force 1 sneaker or a Bic lighter in that they’re a super iconic, lasting piece of design that hasn’t changed much in 38 years". They're not wrong. Made of nylon, and designed for all manner of outdoor activities (Patagonia is, first and foremost, an outdoorsy brand), Baggies are purpose-built for amphibians. These swim shorts are also shorts for mountains, pools and mirror shot thirst traps – especially given the five-inch inseam sweet spot. Your thighness, we are not worthy.
The options are endless. Mr Marvis is a Dutch outfit that goes slightly Mr Ripley on the multifunctional swim short. At the gilded end, Versace, Givenchy and Burberry are adapting their luxury swimwear to be worn everywhere else. And somewhere inbetween, a whole host of disruptor brands are taking advantage of the enduring gorpcore obsession to build bigger, tougher swim shorts.
Ultimately, they'll work harder than anything else in your suitcase. But, like me, you can bang them on for a daily walk in the sub-Saharan scorch of south London. And, like me, you'll realise that a pair of dry land swimmers can work harder than almost anything else in your entire wardrobe, and still look pretty good. This grounded British summer ain't so bad after all.
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