How Today’s Biggest Swimsuit Companies Got Their Start Knitting Wool
Besides
being some of the biggest manufacturers of swimwear today, Catalina,
Cole of California, Jantzen and Speedo have another striking thing in
common: They all got their start as wool knitting mills.
Women in wool knitted swimsuits in Atlantic City in 1922. Photo: Library of Congress
This summer, more than a dozen of America’s top swimmers —
including Ryan Lochte, Missy Franklin, Nathan Adrian, Natalie Coughlin,
Jessica Hardy and Tyler Clary — will suit up in Speedo’s latest performance-driven swimwear for the 2016 Summer Olympics
in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Fastskin LZR Racer X and Fastskin LZR
Racer 2, which run skintight above the knee on both men and women, claim
to offer a variety of athletic enhancements centered around
"compression, construction, sensitivity and support."
Like Nike,
Under Armour, and many other athletic outfitters, Speedo's image is
centered on performance and innovation. But its origins were not always
so high-tech. In fact, it and several of today’s other biggest swimsuit
companies, including Jantzen, Catalina and Cole of California, got their
start in a much more traditional industry: knitting wool.
Long
before the invention of lycra and spandex, women wore swimsuits of fine
ribbed wool to the beach. Typically shaped like a knee-length romper, or
featuring a vest or short-sleeve top with shorts, they bore little
resemblance to the skin-baring, ultra-elastic confections worn today —
particularly when you added shoes, double-layered stockings and other
accessories (including skirt overlays) deemed necessary for modesty's
sake in the first two decades of the 20th century. They were only
available in dark colors, with a minimum of decoration: perhaps some
stripes around the knees, buttons on the shoulders or a tie at the
waist.
Women wore multiple layers of stockings and shoes to Los Angeles beaches in 1918. Photo: Library of Congress
That may not sound very appealing, but they were a great
improvement on the "bathing costumes" women were permitted to wear in
decades prior. During the Victorian period, for example, women often
wore long-sleeve, full-length dresses over bloomers with socks and shoes
into the water. Their skirts were weighed down with lead lest an ankle
go exposed, according to Sarah Kennedy, author of "The Swimsuit: A History of Twentieth-Century Fashions." Unsurprisingly,
this resulted in more than a few drownings. Men were able to wear
fitted woolen suits into the water, similar to the ones women started
wearing in the early 20th century.
Australian
swimmer, diver and performer Annette Kellerman was an early champion of
one-piece bathing costumes for women. Photo: Library of Congress
One-piece swimsuits for women began to take off, ironically,
after long distance swimmer and diver Annette Kellerman was arrested in
Boston in 1907 on the grounds of "indecent exposure" for wearing a
sleeveless woolen version that revealed most of the thigh. She would go
on to champion and even design her own one-piece bathing suits for the
next few decades, explaining, quite reasonably: "I can't swim wearing
more stuff than you hang on a clothesline." Savvy owners of wool
knitting mills in Europe, Australia and the U.S. soon began
manufacturing women's swimsuits alongside the sweaters, socks and
sweaters they'd been producing for years.
For several of these
mills, swimsuits quickly became the most important part of their
business. Portland Knitting Company, which began offering swimsuits
called "Jantzens" in its catalog in 1915, changed its name to Jantzen
Knitting Mills three years later. These swimsuits were advertised with
matching stockings and stocking caps, promising a rib stitch that "gives
that wonderful fit." By 1927, the company had diverted all of its
efforts to swimwear. MacRae and Company Hosiery, in Sydney, Australia,
became Speedo Knitting Mills in 1929, a year after introducing its first
racer-back suit with the slogan, "Speed on in Your Speedos." Bentz
Knitting Mills became Catalina; West Coast Knitting Mills became Cole of
California.
Jantzen advertised its swimsuits with matching stocks and stocking caps in 'Vogue' and 'Life' magazines in 1921. Image: Jantzen
Wool suits were far from ideal for swimming, tending to sag
very unflatteringly (and often revealingly) when wet. Starting in the
mid '20s, swimwear companies began to weave elastic, known as Lastex,
into the suits, offering a far more flattering fit (and for Speedo,
which from its early years was focused on racing wear, suits that
promised water resistance). "[It] was considered a miracle yarn because
it stretched both ways," says Jantzen staff archivist Carol Alhadeff.
The companies quick to embrace the technology — Cole, Catalina, Jantzen
and Mabs of Hollywood among them — thrived. Many went on to patent their
own versions of Lastex (Cole's was called Matletex). Later in the
decade and into the '30s, these companies began to experiment with
synthetic fibers, namely rayon (and later, the great game-changer,
nylon), and introduce more colorful and stylish suits, including
strapless styles. Wool didn't disappear entirely, and Jantzen continued
to use it in suits through the '40s. Big-budget advertising campaigns
that often featured Hollywood celebrities helped these swimsuit
companies become household names synonymous with glamour. Speedo made
itself the competitive swimwear of choice by outfitting Olympics teams.
Bill
Norton, a bathing beach "cop," measures the distance between the hem of
a woman's swimsuit and her knee on a Washington, D.C., beach in 1922.
Photo: Library of Congress
Still, social mores held swimsuit design back. Even into the
'30s, police officers in the U.S. and Europe patrolled the beach with
tape measurers, fining women who showed too many inches of leg. Though
the navel-baring bikini was introduced in 1946, it was generally
considered too risqué for wear until the '60s.
Today’s swimsuits
are largely machine-made from stretchy synthetic fibers. Lycra (also
known as spandex or elastane), nylon and polyester are the most popular,
though you’ll also see designers, such as Lisa Marie Fernandez,
experiment with more unusual materials like terry cloth. While you can
no longer pick up a wool knitted swimsuit at your local department
store, the fiber hasn’t disappeared from swimwear entirely, as knitwear
enthusiasts continue to make — and even wear — swimsuits knit at home.
You just won't see them in Rio this summer.
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