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United States of America : Wet Suits go for style change |
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2004-8-2
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Surfers these days are ‘styling’ up as wave of designer wear products have kept America''s top manufacturers busy creating and dressing people in wet suits designed not just for warmth but also to keep them buff and sexy.
"The designers all seem to be taking a page out of superhero comic books," said Dr. Mark (Doc) Renneker, a San Francisco physician and surfer celebrated for his big-wave riding, who appears in the new surfing documentary ‘Riding Giants.’
Until recently, wet suits made most wearers — with the exceptions of surf gods like Kelly Slater and the women of ‘Baywatch’ - look like misshapen sea mammals. The problem was neoprene, a material that ‘doesn''t lie.’ The suits clung too tightly in some places, calling attention to flaws, and were too baggy in others.
That is no longer true. Neoprene may not lie, but designers have figured out how to use it to cheat, so the latest wet suits for both sexes enhance their wearers'' bodies. Manufacturers have begun varying the thicknesses and textures of neoprene, adding stretchy panels and seams, and modifying the suits'' cuts.
Men''s suits make chests and shoulders look bigger and call attention to muscular areas like calves and biceps, and, like a rubber girdle, hold in abdomens. Women''s suits have the same girdle-like quality and long thigh- and abdomen-slimming seams, and some act like push-up bras.
Not surprisingly, style became important in wet suit design when women began flocking to surfing and other watersports, like boogie boarding. From 2001 to 2003, the number of female surfers doubled, said Marie Case, the managing director of Board-Trac, a market research company specializing in board sports. "As a result, fashion has come to the wet suit industry," Ms. Case said.
Still, some feel that the trend has favored men. "Now guys look great in a suit — my husband looks really great in his," said Sarah Gerhardt, a chemistry professor at the University of Santa Clara who was the first woman to surf the perilous 40-foot waves at Maverick''s, a break near Half Moon Bay, Calif., and who is also featured in "Riding Giants." On the other hand, she said, some manufacturers "are going too far" in the styling of women''s suits. "Some girls'' suits are absolutely disgusting," she said. "They are like a really, really high-cut bathing suit. Yech."
For all the attention being paid to form, the major companies — besides O''Neill and Body Glove, they include Rip Curl, Hotline, Xcel, Quicksilver and Roxy — insist that function is still the first concern. The companies have become increasingly competitive in their quest for warmer, drier and more flexible suits. "We''re working on suits that will incorporate battery-powered heaters," Pat O''Neill said. He predicted that heated suits that generate their own warmth and recycle body heat will be on the market within five years. "They will be a temperature-controlled, completely flexible second layer of skin," he said.
New technology will lead to suits that perform better, and the new styling may offer the only reward that can compete with a perfect wave.
"You''re inside a super-hip, state-of-the-art, rubber human-body girdle, looking cooler and stronger and slimmer and better and feeling it, too," said John Hunter, a designer for O''Neill, whose job includes surfing almost every day for research and product testing. "If, as a result of that, you get some extra love, we''re fine with that." |
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