Surf Cat

US Women’s three-time Women’s World Tour champion of surfing Carissa Moore has been a Hurley-sponsored athlete for over ten years. In 2015, after six years of surfing in her sponsor’s legacy women’s suits, she asked a question that would change the direction of women’s swimwear for Hurley. Moore visited the brand’s innovation and design team with a request: “Make me a top that can stay on when I’m surfing big waves, but that looks as good as it feels.” At the time, she felt the suits that she was wearing didn’t feel as comfortable or secure as she wanted during a competition. The result of a request by a then up-and-coming professional surfer was the first iteration of the Hurley Quick Dry Max Surf Top. 

Breaking with brand tradition of designing swimwear from Hurley’s facility in Costa Mesa, Hurley Global Women’s Product Director Natasha Chaibun shares that, “Our team took that insight from Carissa and immediately begin work with the sports bra team at Nike in Beaverton to gain knowledge on support and how it could apply to water.” The first version of the now best-selling suit launched in 2015; Moore wore the final, pre-retail sample to compete for her World Title. She won the title and has since referred to the sample piece as her lucky suit.

With Moore’s input and pulling in the Nike team, according to Chaibun, Hurley developed a “new kind of swim top, made with compressive fabric, a silhouette that provides both function and coverage, fixed straps and an overall design that offers six anchor points of support.” The Moore-inspired style uses DWR-coated cups, includes cutout channels between the cups to allow water to splash out instead of weighing the top down and a fabric that the brand says is more compressive than any other fabric offered by competitors. 

Of the design priorities, Moore shares that, “It’s a high-performance suit that is super-flattering. There is bondage on the side of the suit to keep breasts centered and in-place. We added a few cutouts between the breasts so that water doesn’t get caught there and drag the suit down. I’ve struggled with chafing under the arms and so they’ve added an anti-chafe fabric in that area. For the bottoms, I used to get wedgies mid-waves and you don’t want to be fiddling with your suit at that critical time, so the design team added gel liners on the outside seam of the bum to keep it in-place.” Basically, there was no design or performance stone left unturned.

Does Moore still swear by this suit? She is already digging into fabric samples for Spring, 2020 and shares that the suit has become so much a part of her that she, “wears it in and out of the water, like a sports bra. I don’t even like normal bras anymore and wear this whenever I can!’ 

Hurley’s Quick Dry Max Surf Top is available globally at select stores and online at hurley.com