Our Story
ABOUT US:
I met my future husband Rene five years ago at a party in Venice, California where we both live. I had just come back from a camping and surf trip in San Clemente with my friend Kassia. I was still wearing the clothes I’d slept in for three days. I guess Rene didn’t mind because he asked for my number and the rest is history. We got married in 2023 and continued our lives with our three boys, working our jobs: me as a photographer’s agent and producer and Rene as a wardrobe stylist.
Both Rene and I have been surfing for most of our lives. My dad was an LA lifeguard, while putting himself through college and medical school.
My uncle Pork Chops was a local (aka, pretty aggressive) Malibu surfer, known for throwing punches at Miki Dora and squabbling with Skip Engblom. The photo on our website and shipping bags is of him, in Malibu in the early 60’s. Rene grew up in Newport Beach and after high school joined the Navy, where he hid a surfboard on the ship he was stationed on in Japan. He surfed all over the South Pacific in shark infested waters, waiting to be caught by his captain, but never was.
We’ve been surfing together since we met. And what I often noticed was that wherever we went, people asked about the surf trunks Rene was wearing. He would buy off the rack trunks from Vissla or Hurley and shorten them, making them less baggy. And he didn’t do it as some hobby: Rene had actually designed at Billabong and Hurley after the Navy, and he knew what worked and what looked good. Other surfers wouldn’t stop asking.
I’ve been collecting vintage clothes of all types since I was a teenager (mostly because I couldn’t afford new clothes and because I wanted to be Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink). So it hit me: why not put our shared knowledge to work and make trunks from vintage fabric? Growing up, there was a photo of me and my mom that I looked at daily. Check it out:
In the 70’s she would have her bathing suits custom made in Hawaii out of cotton fabric. As I considered how Rene and I would begin this project, that memory piqued my imagination. Rene and I talked about what making custom swimwear—items that not only look cool, but feel personal and special, look like today. So we drove around looking for old dead stock fabric and found our first roll. Rene knew a pattern maker from his days in the surf industry, and we soon had our first sample.
Now we were on a mission! We tweaked them, looked for more fabric and finally found Tina in DTLA, who became our pattern maker and sewer. On top of everything looking good, the trunks were totally sustainable: using old deadstock fabric, sewing everything eight miles from our home in Venice with even our labels being made around the block.
Then we had to decide on a name. We have a trailer in a surfing community in Malibu called Paradise Cove; it’s our favorite place on the planet. Our trailer is number 129, well there it was.
They looked good, felt good, and had a name we loved. The final test was seeing them in action. So we went to Fiji to surf and test out the shorts.
They were a big hit. After the Fiji trip, Rene took his son Dakota and friend Frankie to Nexpa in Mexico to surf, take some photos, and further test drive the shorts. Good news and bad news: We got some great pics of locals, here is Martine-80 years old in our shorts.
Bad news was that while Rene was surfing, the cord inside the waistband broke and he was instantly surfing naked. Which I imagine in some cases is fun, but definitely not when your teenaged son is in the water with you. We reinforced the cords with a double stitch and rest assured, it won’t happen to you.
I think we must be out of our minds trying to do this, because each fabric we buy only yields between 17-23 pairs of trunks. There’s no obvious way to scale the business because we will not use new fabric. But throughout this R&D process, it’s become clear to us both that what’s most important is producing something that makes us happy and proud, and that reflects our creative inspirations, as well as our amazing lives—past, present, and future. We sure hope they make you happy, too.
Xo Sofie and Rene
