How a Fashion Faux Pas Kickstarted This Beloved Resort Wear Brand

The gap between swimsuit and swim shorts may not strike many as a meaningful sartorial schism. But on one afternoon in the fall of 2005, it was the difference that saw British photographer Adam Brown turned away from lunch at the high-end Indian hotel where he was staying for a friend’s 40^th birthday. As Brown retreated to his room to change into non-bathing attire, he had a small epiphany: he wanted a pair of shorts that he could swim in. 

It’s easy to envision what such a pool-to-patio missing link looks like today, because the scorned swimmer went on to found Orlebar Brown in 2007 with a single, signature product: the Bulldog short. Made from lightweight and quick-drying Italian polyester but patterned after a traditional trouser with tailored details including a defined waistband and adjustable side fasteners, the short ensured that Brown would never be denied post-swim meal service again—and seeded a resort wear empire that’s since expanded into apparel and accessories and now counts 48 standalone stores around the globe.

That such success sprung from a holiday snafu suggests that Brown had a grand plan on par with the Bond villains whom have since influenced the label’s highly successful 007 Collection. But in truth, Brown—who’d previously worked at a number of charities before returning to college to study photography in middle age—essentially winged it. Upon returning from India, he conducted “market research”—”Which wasn’t sophisticated at all, just looking around department stores and looking at what was out there,” he recalls—and took a three-day start-your-own-fashion-business course as well as a week-long drawing course at Central Saint Martins.

On January 30^th, 2007, Orlebar Brown entered the world with its Bulldog in four lengths. The business was little more than a storage unit with its founder packing the orders himself, but by 2011 the label opened its first store in Notting Hill, which Brown fondly recalls as “A tiny sliver of a shop with one window.” Word-of-mouth and orders from department stores such as Selfridges moved product and raised the brand’s profile, but it was a moment in 2012 that suddenly catapulted the fledging business to international fame: the November release of Skyfall, which put a shredded, pensive Daniel Craig in a pair of Riviera-blue Bulldog shorts.

“When the James Bond thing happened, that was a seismic moment,” recalls Brown, who’d had no knowledge that the Bulldog would feature in the film. “Suddenly, we reached an international audience very quickly… it was one of those wave moments when you could feel things happening” (among those taking notice was Chanel, which would purchase Orlebar Brown for an undisclosed sum in 2018).

In a life-imitates-art twist, the label went on to collaborate with the franchise, launching an ongoing 007 Collection with swim shorts and apparel like toweling polos and Capri collar silk shirts inspired by the films. Other collaborations past and present have included the estate of society photographer Slim Aarons and Lamborghini. The key to them all, in Brown’s telling, has been the upscale holiday brand’s broad appeal.

“It’s relevant to Bond, it’s relevant to Lamborghini, it’s relevant to Silm Aarons. They all have a very different feel and personality, but Orlebar Brown slots into those worlds relatively easily.”

The world of Orlebar Brown has grown with its increased physical footprint around the world. Its first apparel offering arrived in 2010 with t-shirts and polos, and today shoppers are just as able to walk out with (or add to cart) an embroidered linen popover or a pair of garment-dyed cotton trousers as they are a 6” Bulldog short; Brown even cites shirts and trousers as the business’s fastest-growing categories. Given its expanse into a head-to-toe resort wear outfitter that even trades in unstructured jackets and knitted trainers, how does the label continue to grow without losing sight of its original purpose?

Brown’s answer is simple: never lose sight of the short you can swim in.

“The shorts are at the center of everything we do… if you can’t wear the shirt with it, if the trousers don’t relate to it, then it probably shouldn’t be in the collection.”

With its founder speculating that the brand may even one day branch into other holiday-related categories like luggage and sun care, it’s easy to imagine Orlebar Brown being with us for a long time to come. Particularly if it never loses sight of its origins.

Credit: robbreport.com