Even if you are not a surfer yourself you can’t fail to have noticed that surfer fashion has become the standard in modern beach wear. Board shorts, hoodies, flip flops and sandals are everywhere you look in the high street clothing stores.
Board shorts first hit the Californian west coast in the 1960s and have since skyrocketed in popularity. If you remember before then the beach apparel for men and women was not very appealing with limited options including speedos and swimming costumes that came down to you’re your thighs. Board shorts took the world by storm 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, to be stylish and to be everything that currently available shorts weren’t. For example, they made them light and fast drying because they hated being wet time after time coming out of the water and feeling wet and soggy. They designed them to be easy to move around in so the shorts didn’t rub you when you were in the water or on your board. Ultimately they came up with the perfect pair of shorts.
Not surprisingly board shorts soon caught on. Board shorts were soon becoming popular with everyone from film stars to fat, lazy couch potatos who had never seen a surf board in their lives. 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.
