The Essentials: Swim In These Locally-Made Trunks By Bather
Want to up your summer style without sweating it? Match your camp-collar shirt with your trunks.
Image: Bather
One of the best pairs of swim trunks you’ll buy aren’t Hawaiian, nor are they Californian or Costa Rican.
Forget all of those balmy locales.
Toronto — a city that sees minus-twenty degree days come winter — is the proud birthplace of our brand at hand (but if we’re being technical, T.O. does swelter in the summer, with sticky, thirty-plus degree days being the norm).
Bather is the brainchild of one Kyle Kaminsky, a 36-year-old local entrepreneur who’d tried his hand at selling home theatres and detailing cars before settling on perfecting men’s swimwear in 2013. “Im a pretty big water guy,” says Kaminsky. “I was travelling one year and realized it was really hard to find a good bathing suit that didnt cost over $300. So, I decided to see if I could design something to fill that void in the market.”
Good thing, too; By showing men it can be fun to wear cool swim trunks, Bather’s battling the board short in a continent that’s still too familiar with them.
Unless you know what “duck diving” means, stick to swim trunks. Too many men have laid waste to their looks by sporting board shorts.
Surf trunks are for surfers.
Swim trunks are for everyone.
Board shorts are for banishment.
In the eight years he’s been in business, Kaminsky’s brand’s been picked up by the likes of GQ, The New York Times and The Globe & Mail, which is to say his trunks tick all the right boxes.
High-quality? Every pair’s made in Toronto and with recycled ocean waste, no less; All patterned pieces are a recycled polyester blend, each produced from 100% consumer-used plastic bottles (according to the brand, our oceans are forced to swallow five million tonnes of plastic every year, so good on them for doing something about it). Polyester helps wick moisture, too. Though, if we’re keeping count, so does the recycled nylon in the brand’s solid trunk collection.
“We made the move to recycled materials this year,” explains Kaminsky. “It was a move we’d wanted to make for a while but we needed to find a comparable fabric. We actually found a nicer fabric than we are currently using, which was well worth the wait.”
What’s more, Kaminsky’s amped up his offering of late, foraying into organic french terry for his sweatshirt line last year. Plus he has 100% recycled cotton tees coming out this month. “We’re continuing to develop new sustainable means of producing our garments, and this is all in addition to our local manufacturing.”
Stylishness? Get ballsy and grab a pair in a black and white bandana motif, or go with a heavy dose of florals (of which there’s no shortage in options). For simpler tastes, Bather stocks trunks in everything from solid black to olive to brighter, more playful hues like sea foam.
Kaminsky’s subtle signature move is crafting classic band collar button-up shirts, with several printed to match some of his pattered trunks, à la first model in this post.
By the way, if you do surf, Bather’s got those shorts covered, too.
