Beach Ready – The Swimwear Pieces Worth Investing In 

The Cheap Suit Always Tells On Itself 

Give it an hour. Any budget swimsuit will eventually reveal itself on a real Jamaican beach, the seam gives, the colour bleeds, the fit that looked fine in a bedroom mirror suddenly can’t survive actual saltwater and actual sun. Investing in swimwear isn’t about spending more to feel fancy. It’s about buying from people who’ve spent their whole lives testing fabric against exactly that standard. 

Built for a Body, Not Scaled Up From One 

Dania Beckford started Broadtail Designs after getting endlessly tired of suits that technically came in her size but were never actually built for a fuller figure, just a smaller pattern stretched wider. “Plenty of international brands had simply made their sizes larger without actually redesigning for a fuller figure,” she says. Her pieces go the other direction entirely: “pieces that accentuate what a woman wants accentuated and camouflage what she wants camouflaged, not out of shame but out of skill.” That’s the entire difference between a suit that survives a full beach day and one you’re adjusting every ten minutes. 

Every Stitch Is a Decision 

Vivienne Richards of Zee Richie makes swimwear for “the risk takers: the bathing suits that ask you to be bold, to take up space, to own the beach”, crocheted by hand, stitch by stitch, often through the night. “I will stay up all night creating. Not because I have to, but because the work pulls me forward and I don’t want to stop.” A machine doesn’t make those decisions one at a time. A person does. That’s why the finished piece holds together the way it does. 

Elevated Doesn’t Mean Delicate 

Saffron Brown built Safari Swimwear around a genuinely tricky balance: resort wear that feels elevated without turning fragile or impractical. “Elevated, but never strained. Beautiful, but never performing.” Natural fibres, thoughtful construction, the slow-fashion math that costs more up front and lasts a whole lot longer than a suit built to be replaced by next season. She’s been candid about the price tension that comes with that: “Quality materials. Skilled hands. Ethical production. Time.” That’s the receipt for a suit that survives the summer, not just the photo. 

The Fabric Search Nobody Sees 

Dania’s own process starts somewhere shoppers rarely think about: “A creative day for me begins with fabric. Hours of searching for the right material: thick enough for the compression a swimsuit requires, with the right amount of stretch, draping correctly for resort wear.” That search is the actual reason a well-made suit holds its shape after saltwater and sun while a cheap one starts sagging by round two. It also took real time to find seamstresses who could sew for a fuller figure specifically, “not every seamstress who sews beautifully for average-sized bodies knows how to sew for plus size bodies. The skills overlap but they are not identical.” That invisible labour is exactly what you’re paying for. 

Pack Smart, Pack Once 

Flying home for Independence season with one suitcase? Swimwear is the hardest category to guess right from a distance, sizing charts lie, overseas returns are a whole ordeal. Order ahead from a maker who builds for the beaches you’re actually flying in to visit, and skip the gamble entirely. Handmade pieces take real time, which is exactly why they hold up, worth planning around instead of scrambling the morning of. 

What to Actually Look For 

Compression and stretch that match how you actually move, seams and embellishments fitted to a real body instead of a standard form, and a maker who can explain, in actual detail, why the piece is built the way it is. If they can’t answer that last question, keep shopping. A cheap suit failing mid-beach-day isn’t just annoying, it’s a whole afternoon derailed, the awkward readjust, the towel-wrap walk back to the car. A well-built suit means you forget you’re wearing anything at all, which is the entire point of a good swimsuit in the first place. 

The Ten-Year Test 

Here’s a good gut check for whether a suit is worth the money: would you still want it in a decade? Dania Beckford’s original polka dot monokini, the one that basically started Broadtail Designs, is still shaping the pieces she makes today, ten years later. Run the actual math, too: a cheap suit replaced twice a season costs about the same as one well-made piece that lasts five years. The handmade option isn’t the expensive choice here, over time, it’s very often the cheaper one, just with the cost distributed differently. Beach season doesn’t last forever though, so the sooner you’re in one of these, the more actual wear you get out of it this year. 

Shop Things Jamaican in-store at Devon House, NMIA, and 14 Camp Road, or online at thingsjamaicanshopping.com. Wear Jamaica Fi Summa. 

Editorial Team

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