SYDNEY — Surf’s up for Dion Lee, who’s launching an 18-piece wetsuit capsule with Australian surfboard maker Haydenshapes.
Launching on Tuesday, the 18-piece Haydenshapes Rubber by Dion Lee assortment will bow at Ssense, dionlee.com, haydenshapes.com and Lee’s stand-alone shops in Australia and the U.S. The gathering’s hero merchandise are core efficiency wetsuits for women and men, comprised of nonpetroleum-based rubber derived from limestone that’s manufactured by the Osaka-based Yamamoto firm and is far softer than conventional neoprene. There may be additionally a modular vary of limestone neoprene bodysuits, crop tops, shorts and leggings that may be combined and matched.
As teased by way of a handful of early prototypes that appeared in Lee’s spring 2023 assortment proven at New York Style Week final September, a 3rd of the gathering was designed to cross over into able to put on. However the assortment’s vogue touches — which embody corsetry detailing, a Dion Lee signature — have additionally been designed and examined to be absolutely practical in browsing, a primary for the surf world, in keeping with Haydenshapes. Based within the Sydney suburb of Mona Vale in 1997 by Hayden Cox at age 15, Haydenshapes is famous for its FutureFlex patented parabolic carbon fiber body surfboard development and right now sells surfboards in additional than 70 international locations.
Costs of the capsule vary from $250 for a girls’s long-sleeved bolero as much as $690 for the full-length girls’s and males’s “steamer” wetsuits. One other of Lee’s signatures, the so-called “braided backbone” braided cutout detailing that has grow to be an indicator of his tailoring, has additionally been integrated into a number of “Aqualung” items that function gill-like options.
“I’ve at all times been fascinated with wetsuiting; reinterpreting and manipulating neoprene in my collections,” mentioned Lee, a eager surfer who grew up in Sydney. “Working with Hayden on this undertaking got here collectively organically and I consider we had been in a position to current a product that delivers each in design and efficiency.”
A second drop scheduled for later within the yr will see wetsuits that incorporate a brand new four-way stretch merino wool lining that that has been developed between Haydenshapes and The Woolmark Firm.
The Dion Lee collaboration is on no account Haydenshapes’ first vogue foray.
In 2014, Cox created surfboard installations for Alexander Wang’s New York and Tokyo flagships. In August 2022, Cox branched out into up to date males’s ready-to-wear by way of a 35-piece capsule assortment that was launched on Mr Porter. In December, Haydenshapes then partnered with the Woolmark Firm on the discharge of a nine-piece males’s capsule assortment that includes merino wool.
“Our method in launching wetsuits wasn’t to undertake the present format and apply our logos,” mentioned Cox. “I really feel like our viewers appreciates the distinctive lens we deliver to what we do and element we prefer to go to with development and materials. Working with a designer like Dion Lee, who is among the most modern minds in architectural vogue tailoring and who additionally has a deep historical past and understanding of working with neoprene, is a real contribution to the wetsuit area. That’s one thing I at all times attempt to obtain on the subject of collaboration, honoring our core surf model DNA while on the similar time presenting a brand new concept and method on how efficiency surf merchandise might be designed and made.”
