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Aaberg, Denny

Aaberg, Kemp

Abberton, Koby

Abbruzzi, Sid

Abellira, Reno

Abubo, Megan

academia and surfing

Adler, Tom

advertising and surfing

Aeder, Erik

aerial

Aguerre, Fernando

Aichner, Scott

Aikau, Clyde

Aikau, Eddie

Aipa, Ben

air-drop

airbrush

Airshow

Ala Moana

Alabama

alaia board

Alaska

alcohol and surfing

Alexander, Kala

Allen, Chuck

Alms, Paige

aloha shirt

Alter, Hobie

Alvarez, Pepe

Ancell, Kevin

Andaman Islands

Andersen, Lisa

Anderson, Craig

Anderson, Simon

Andino, Kolohe

Angel, Jose

angle

Angola

Angourie

Antarctica

Apocalypse Now

Arabian Sea

Aragon, Janice

Arakawa, Eric

Archbold, Matt

Arena, Eduardo

Ashton, Juan

Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP)

Atlantic Ocean

August, Robert

Aurness, Rolf

Auster, Ken

Australia

Avalon, Frankie

Azores

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backside

backside attack, Pipeline

backwash

bail out

Bain, Rob

Baja California

Baker, Bernie

Baker, Grant “Twiggy”

Baker, Tim

Bali

Ball, John “Doc”

Ballard, Bill

Ballard, Rochelle

balsa

Baltic Sea

Banks, Jim

Barbados

Barilotti, Steve

Barland, Michel

Barreda, Sergio “Gordo”

Barry, Michael

Bartholomew, Wayne

Baxter, Jackie

Bay of Bengal

Beach Boys, The

Beacham, Debbie

beachboys

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Beachley, Layne

beavertail

Becker, Phil

Bedford-Brown, Stuart

Belgium

Bells Beach

Bendall, Ma and Pa

Bennett, Barry

Benson, Becky

Benson, Blanche

Benson, Linda

Bermuda

Bertlemann, Larry

While trunks were designed for surfing as far back as the 1930s, the basic precepts of surf fashion—a look based mainly on soft, loose-fitting, comfortable clothes—took shape not long after World War II. Surf style developed mostly out of function (long, loose surf trunks wouldn't fill up with water, and kept the rider's thighs from abrasive rubbing against the surfboard's deck), and partly from a desire to break away from button-down and corseted mainstream fashions. "We wanted to stand out," recalled American big-wave pioneer Greg Noll, who made a surfing fashion statement of sorts in 1952 by entering his eighth-grade homeroom class wearing a trench coat with a rotting anchovy in the pocket. "We had the teachers and the parents a little worried, and we made a game of it." A tropical influence was felt as well, as surfers favored straw hats and flower-print fabrics. But jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers were surfing fashion staples in the '50s, and remain so today.

As the sport's popularity skyrocketed in the late '50s and '60s, the "surfer look" took on new elements, including peroxide-treated hair (the "bushy- bushy blond hairdo," as the Beach Boys put it in their 1963 hit "Surfin' USA"), woolen Pendleton shirts, Mexican-made huarache sandals with tire-tread soles, snap-fly nylon trunks, and zip-up nylon competition- stripe jackets. The surfing T-shirt was introduced in 1961—each white cotton short-sleeve shirt emblazoned with the logotype for Weber Surfboards, or Hobie Surfboards, or Jacobs Surfboards, or dozens of other board-making companies—and within five years had become the sport's most recognizable and durable fashion item. In 2002 alone, it was estimated that 300 million surf-themed T-shirts were produced worldwide.

While beach-city tailors and seamstresses had been custom-making trunks for surfers for more than 20 years, the surfwear industry began in California in 1959, when boat-cover manufacturers Kanvas by Katin, located in the north Orange County town of Surfside, began making a line of indestructible lace- fly canvas surf trunks. Another half-dozen surfwear companies were founded in the early and mid-'60s, including industry leader Hang Ten. As the initial surf boom faded, surf fashion nearly disappeared into the counterculture fashion swirl; attendees at the 1968 

 Magazine Readers Poll Awards wore buckskin jackets, bell-bottoms, fringed vests, paisley-print shirts, scarves, ascots, beads, headbands, and body paint. Surf styles returned in the early and mid-'70s, defined for the most part by a series of fashion missteps, including airbrushed shirts, muslin drawstring pants, oval "mat slaps," and the snug short-inseam surf trunk. Ocean Pacific's corduroy "walkshort" was by far surfing's biggest contribution to the larger world of fashion, with puka-shell necklaces a distant second.

Australia-based Quiksilver, founded as a surf trunk company in 1973, was a surf world hit by the end of the decade, on its way to becoming the inter- national beachwear industry kingpin. The mid- and late '80s brought a second surf boom: Hobie Sportswear and Ocean Pacific were among the profit leaders, and as reported in 

 magazine, total retail surfwear sales in 1986 for the first time hit the $1 billion mark (with a high percentage of items, the magazine noted, going to "beach potatoes who are nonetheless attracted to the image of eternal youth and endless summers"). Other top labels of the period included Gotcha, Billabong, Maui & Sons, Mossimo, and Stussy. Loose, full-cut trunks returned, but the industry detoured into a garish neon-hued new wave phase. By 1990, surfwear designs were on their way to being thoroughly co-opted by the fashion mainstream. Baggy "boardshorts" (Australian for surf trunks) were available at Sears and Macy's, and surf logo T-shirts were ubiquitous summer attire in every state in the nation, and at vacation areas worldwide. Casual Fridays, the relaxed dress-code policy adopted by hundreds of American corporations in the early '90s and beyond, might even be seen as a move toward the surfer fashion ethos. Quiksilver meanwhile became the first surf company to go mainstream and not lose its surfer base. (It was also the first surf company to go public, with an initial public stock offering in 1986.)

After a flat period in the early '90s, the beachwear market once again exploded, with global retail sales in 2002 thought to be as high as $8 billion. Women's surfwear for the first time was driving the industry, with Quiksilver spinoff Roxy leading the way (Roxy introduced female boardshorts and nonslip bikini tops not long after its founding in 1991; the line grew to include beachwear of every description, plus shoes, bed linens, luggage, jewelry boxes, and steering wheel covers.) An aggressive surfer skateboarder hybrid fashion sense was meanwhile brought to bear on sunglasses (Black Flys) and shoes (Vans, Globe, Airwalk). By the late '00s, '80s-inspired fashions, particularly garish neon splashes, had returned to the surf wear scene. Sportswear titan Nike had also re-entered the surf wear fray with gusto, signing young stars including Kolohe Andino, Julian Wilson, and Carissa Moore to lucrative marketing deals. Despite gains throughout the decade, the global recession that began in 2008 pummeled the surf apparel industry; retail sales in the U.S. were about $1 billion in 2010, a loss of 41%. In 2011 Billabong, one of the "Big Three" worldwide surf wear giants along with Quiksilver and Rip Curl, was near bankruptcy and fending off hostile takeover bids.

Since the late '90s, business-related surfwear articles have appeared in

 have all published surf fashion photo spreads. Gucci introduced a line of $1,900 Italian-made surfboards in 2001; runway models for the spring 2003 fashion shows in Paris were accoutered with longboards. California's Orange County, sometimes called "Velcro Valley," remains the center of surf fashion and industry.

fashion and surfing

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