Surf style book gives chillier locations the cold shoulder
From the images in The Stylish Life: Surfing, you wouldn’t know that there’s much of a scene beyond California and Hawaii, writes Roger Cox
Headquartered in Berlin, the teNeues publishing company specialises in making high-end books about photography and design. They also produce bespoke content for clients including Ferrari, Porsche, Lufthansa, Cartier, Dior and... well... you get the general idea. High production values are kind of a big deal for these guys.
In 2015 teNeues launched a series of fashion-adjacent coffee table books called “The Stylish Life”, kicking off with tennis and golf and following up with yachting and skiing, each one charting the evolution of what constitutes “style” for participants in each activity. The latest addition to the series is The Stylish Life: Surfing, written by Jen See, and it provides an illuminating 176-page romp through the evolution of surf fashion over the last 100 years or so.
In the early 20th century, with surfing still little more than a niche curiosity for visitors to Hawaii, the high-waisted surf trunks worn by Waikiki beach boy and Olympic swimmer Duke Kahanamoku were what passed for surf style. A travel brochure for Hawaii dating from 1918 shows an artist’s impression of the Duke riding a gentle Waikiki roller with a big grin on his face, his arms spread wide and his crotch thrust forward, the better to show off his swimwear.
Taken almost a decade later by the pool of the Ambassador Hotel in Honolulu, a 1927 photograph of Kahanamoku and fellow US Olympian Mickey Riley shows them rocking sleeveless woolen bathing suits that finish just a fraction above their very short matching shorts – not a look that endured among male surfers, but an unlikely precursor of the miniskirt craze that would later sweep women’s fashion.
Speaking of the 1960s, the decade when surfing really exploded into the global consciousness inevitably gets a lot of space devoted to it here. By the early 60s, the centre of surf style had shifted from Hawaii to California, and so we get pictures of gangs of giggling young women wearing an array of colourful bikinis at surf spots like Malibu, alongside images of young men wearing what must surely have been uncomfortably tight boardshorts. Taking this trend to extremes was Elvis Presley, who is shown here in a promotional photograph for the 1961 film Blue Hawaii, pretending to ride a surfboard with Jenny Maxwell balanced on his shoulders and wearing a pair of white elasticated shorts so figure-hugging they appear to be cutting off the circulation to his legs.
Happily for all concerned, by the late 60s and early 70s boardshorts had started getting longer and baggier. A picture of a group of surfers taken outside a hut at Laguna Beach, California, in 1970 shows a couple of men wearing boardies that look a lot like something you might see today; the woman standing between them, however, wearing pristine white trousers, thick-framed glasses and what looks a lot like a cricket sweater, could hardly be more 70s if she tried.
The 1980s and 1990s are a little under-sold, the former largely summed up in a few stills from the 1987 movie North Shore (with big wave legend Laird Hamilton playing a baddie in to-die-for black and turquoise shark-print shorts), the latter dealt with via shots of Kelly Slater and Pamela Anderson in Baywatch. Could this book have painted a more rounded picture of surf style if it had incorporated more of the day-glo madness of the 1980s? Absolutely. And would it have felt more complete with even a brief diversion into the heavily-tattooed, punk-inspired style epitomised by aerial innovator and all-around bad boy Christian Fletcher in the 90s? Very much so. As a guide to the evolution of mainstream style, though, it ticks most of the obvious boxes.
There is one big surf style box that remains unticked, however, and that’s cold water style. There is a line in See’s text in which she references surfing in higher latitudes – “improved wetsuit designs have [...] expanded surfing’s reach to cold water destinations such as Iceland and Alaska” – but to judge by the images in this book, you’d think that surfing took place almost exclusively in warm water locations. Sure, there are a couple of pictures of surfers in wetsuits riding the chilly waves at San Francisco’s Fort Point in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge, but when it comes to beach fashion we’re in either tropical or subtropical territory. By my count there’s only one picture of a guy wearing a beanie and he’s also wearing shorts, so wherever he is (the location isn’t specified) it can’t have been all that cold.
There’s more than enough to say about the development of cold water surf style to justify another book on the same scale as this one. Over the years, as well as surfing here in Scotland I’ve visited a variety of chilly surf destinations overseas, from Maine to Tasmania to Vancouver Island, and just as there’s a recognisable surf uniform for warm water locations, so a sort of unofficial dress code has developed in these places too, featuring hoodies, beanies and thick plaid shirts. A Scottish surfer walking into a surf shop in Portland or Hobart or Tofino would find they look a lot like the locals. So, if teNeues ever do decide to bring out a cold water surfing edition of The Stylish Life, perhaps they could start here.
The Stylish Life: Surfing, by Jen See, is published by teNeues, £29.95
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