Ethics & Sustainability

OHOY SWIM is a slow-fashion swimwear brand. We make few pieces, make them well, and stand by them.

Our fabric starts as nylon waste that already exists, carpet flooring, industrial plastic, and a small share of recovered fishing nets, regenerated in Italy into premium ECONYL® yarn. Nothing new is extracted from the planet; existing waste is kept out of landfills and the sea.

We produce in small runs, work with makers we trust, and design for years of wear rather than seasons.

No swimwear brand is harmless, including ours. The honest version of sustainability is buying less and buying better. That's what we make: pieces that last.

Eight million tons of waste enter our seas every year. 640,000 tons of it are abandoned fishing nets  "ghost nets" that injure and kill millions of marine animals. Unless this changes, by 2050 the ocean may hold more garbage than fish (FAO, UNEP).

The yarn we buy has a supply chain we're very proud of: Healthy Seas volunteer divers recover abandoned fishing nets from the ocean floor, and those nets feed the regeneration stream our ECONYL® fabric comes from. Waste pulled from the sea, returned as swimwear.

Our swimwear is cut and sewn at a small family-owned factory in Portugal. Keeping production close to our Italian fabric shortens the supply chain and lets us see it clearly.

Some pieces need different hands. Our beeswax sunshine hats are still made by Mr Ajith's workshop in Sri Lanka, where the brand began. And our Yulex® spring suits are made by a specialist wetsuit manufacturer, a craft of its own, requiring skills and equipment no swimwear factory has.

YULEX®  NATURAL RUBBER, NOT NEOPRENE.

Traditional neoprene is made from petroleum. Our spring suits use Yulex® instead: a high-performance foam made from natural rubber harvested from rubber trees and sourced from FSC-certified forests.It provides the warmth and flexibility expected from a wetsuit while reducing manufacturing emissions by up to 80% compared with conventional neoprene, according to Yulex. The suits are lined with regenerated ECONYL® fabric.

Every piece carries a hangtag of recycled paper on a recycled cotton string, wears a biodegradable hygiene liner that protects it while being tried on, and ships in a small recycled organic-cotton bag you'll find other uses for.