Stay Cool This Summer in Boardshorts
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. The hight street clothing stores are full of flip flops, sandals, board shorts and hoodies, all developed from beach bum fashions.
Board shorts first hit the Californian west coast in the 1960s and have since skyrocketed in popularity. Earlier beach wear, for both men an women, had not been particularly stylish or practical with little to choose from in speedos and all in one swimming costumes that came to your thighs. Board shorts quickly became popular 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.
Board shorts were designed by two surfers who knew exactly what they wanted when it came to practical surf wear. They designed board shorts to be practical, hard wearing and stylish, 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.
Beach and surf wear is now a multi-million pound industry and board shorts are sold all over the world for boys, girls men and women. It’s interesting to think that very few of the people who wear board shorts will ever actually stand on a surfboard.