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, constructed from nonpetroleum-based rubber derived from limestone that’s manufactured by the Osaka-based Yamamoto firm and is way softer than conventional neoprene. There’s additionally a modular vary of limestone neoprene bodysuits, crop tops, shorts and leggings that may be blended 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 trend touches — which embrace corsetry detailing, a Dion Lee signature — have additionally been designed and examined to be totally useful in browsing, a primary for the surf world, in line 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 at the moment sells surfboards in additional than 70 nations.
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 change into a trademark of his tailoring, has additionally been integrated into a number of “Aqualung” items that characteristic gill-like options.
“I’ve all the time been fascinated with wetsuiting; reinterpreting and manipulating neoprene in my collections,” stated Lee, a eager surfer who grew up in Sydney. “Working with Hayden on this challenge got here collectively organically and I consider we have 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 trend foray.
In 2014, Cox created surfboard installations for Alexander Wang’s New York and Tokyo flagships. In August 2022, Cox branched out into modern 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,” stated Cox. “I really feel like our viewers appreciates the distinctive lens we convey to what we do and element we wish to go to with development and materials. Working with a designer like Dion Lee, who is likely one of the most revolutionary minds in architectural trend 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 all the time attempt to obtain on the subject of collaboration, honoring our core surf model DNA while on the identical time presenting a brand new concept and method on how efficiency surf merchandise will be designed and made.”