The Swimsuit That Launched a Thousand Knockoffs

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1:04Just go to puck.news slash fashionpeople to join Puck or start a free trial. Happy Friday, everyone. I'm recording this early. As you know, I'm on a break. Thank you for all the well vacation wishes. It was very sweet. Yesterday on Line Sheet, we had a guest columnist, the legendary fashion reporter, Terry Agins. She is, as you all know, incredible. She's the OG. I am so thrilled that she joined us in Thursday's issue. Terry broke down how fast fashion has transformed the clothing industry at large and why we are still feeling the effects today, maybe more than ever. Terry will be back on Monday too.

1:46Hopefully when you listen to this, I'll be on a beach or at the pool. I'm on the lookout for puck merch in the wild report. back at UCM and have a great weekend. That's Victoria Georgiana. Georgiana Huddart, welcome to Fashion People. Thank you for having me, Lauren. What'd you have for breakfast this morning? Oh my gosh, I had avocado on toast, like very influencer-y of me. I think you're a little younger than me, but I think we're of the same generation lifestyle-wise. And I have it almost every single day. It's a great meal. It's a really good meal. I'm really into a boiled egg and avocado on toast.

2:31I'm not really a cereal woman. I'm not really a sweet woman, so it really does the job. Yeah, I agree. I think I'm going to actually have it for lunch. I'm glad I've influenced you. Yes. Well, you influence many people. So we're here because you own and run this brand Hunza G, which you and I met about a year ago or maybe it was two years ago now. It was two years. Yeah. Oh, my God. So crazy. But obviously, I knew about the swimwear, which is this. You can talk more about the scrunchie material. But I actually got the idea to do this earlier this summer when I was at my friend's pool and was with a bunch of moms and kids and everyone had on Hunza G or Hunza G, let's just say inspired swimwear.

3:25And I just realized it really has taken over as the sort of go-to for a certain set of women. And I think even beyond that, it's just that texture is now almost standardized in swimwear as part of it. And it is really because of you, because Hansa G has been around for a long time and the material has been around for a long time, but you modernized it. Tell me about yourself. How did you get into fashion and how did you end up running this brand? By the way, thank you for saying all of that. It's always like amazing to hear. um yeah it's a bit of a kind of it's a bit of a random story um but like you know an interesting one I I basically um I went to I went to university I did history of art I left and I worked for a menswear designer then I moved to New York to um intern for Camilla Nickerson who's a stylist I learned so much from her, came back to the UK.

4:34But in this interim period, I had been thinking about the crinkle material because my mum was pregnant six times. I've got five younger brothers and sisters and she had some Hunza in the 80s. So we had this like dressing up box filled with old swimming costumes that she'd wear. And I'd watch her wear it pregnant, wear it postpartum. there was a red dress that was like the pretty woman dress that Julia Roberts wears that we used to make my brother put on we'd be like put the red dress on he had just sisters for like five years so it was a really kind of seminal part of my childhood the crinkle fabric and then I never saw it again Peter who started Hansa in 1984 had sort of 10 years of success with it and then it sort of dwindled a bit and he thought that nobody wanted to buy it anymore so he moved on to something else completely different and left the crinkle fabric completely dormant so when I was I think I must have been 20 I went to Berlin and I was in a charity shop a vintage shop and I found a whole rail of vintage crinkle and it just like I hadn't thought about it for maybe 15 years and it just like massively triggered something in my brain and I couldn't believe that this product didn't exist so I bought the whole rail I think I bought it for like 100 euros and it must have been 12 pieces so like eight euros a piece and I started to wear it to festivals and on holidays and think about the composition of it and that it was a tubular fabric and that it fitted everybody and that it was sort of democratic but it also had a performance element to it and I just I couldn't understand why no one was using the fabric or or making product in it so I tried to get the fabric made reached out to a few factories from like 20 the age of 20 but nobody really responded because it was sort of like Georgiana at yahoo.1989 so wasn't taken very seriously um and on and you know on the side also you know this was a side project that was like my sort of fantasy thing that I'd think about when I had a spare moment um and I had a I was doing other jobs at the time in the day um and then I really sat down one day and was like I've got to make this happen I'd bought everything at that point off eBay and Depop that I could find and I had been worried about reaching out to Peter because, you know, I didn't know who he was.

7:18Peter Meadows, right? That's his. Yes. The man who had the original Hunza. I wasn't sure how to get in touch with him. I wasn't sure whether he'd be interested. And eventually I was like, this is my, you know, it's my last port of call. And somebody, somebody had seen me at a party wearing crinkle and said that they knew Peter and that they can introduce me. So it just felt like all you know all these moments had aligned and they looped me in an email with him and we met in a cafe a week later this is in 2014 and I had my like bag of ideas in a plastic plastic bag and some drawings and I said like I think like there's a real market for this that there isn't a brand that exists like this what you did in the 80s was incredible it was so iconic but also we could have all different types of women wearing this product and there is a performance element to it and it makes your body look amazing and he um gave me his blessing said like to that he was happy for me to kind of give it a go he gave me a space in an office that he already had he had a seamstress in the basement because he was making product in different fabrics for online wholesalers like high street brands.

8:34And so I started a week later with a laptop and it sort of took off from there. So what was he doing in between? Was he mostly doing like third party white labeled stuff? Exactly. He was making like very different stuff. He was making dresses for phase eight he was making t-shirts he he's he more of a kind of garment industry um guy and so he'd sort of left the left the crinkle behind and you know he was very much someone who followed trends so if something felt like it was no longer a trend he'd move on to something else and i think i think that that's what happened with the crinkle is that you know it was it was incredibly powerful in the 80s and he did these amazing colors but then you know you go into the 90s and everything becomes a bit more monochromatic and everyone's kind of repulsed by the 80s and the fluoro and the high cuts and yeah and um it hansa didn't move forwards with that you know they had a very limited color palette of like bright orange lime and and and sort of fluoro purple and it didn't feel maybe as relevant in the 90s as it had when it had begun.

9:48So he just thought no one was interested in it. So you relaunched it as Hunza G. Did you end up buying it from him or does he still own it? You don't have to go into like super detail, but what's the sort of structure of it now? Yeah, it was really exciting. I fully bought it off him in October. Of this year or? Oh my God, congrats. Thank you. Wow, that's awesome. It was really intense. I went through a kind of long process of trying to work out what we, and with his blessing, like we did it together. He had the majority equity. And when we had relaunched, you know, he had the majority. He gave me a huge chunk of equity.

10:35But, you know, I kind of led the business for the last 10 years. And then it got to the point where, you know, he wanted to sell, you know, he's he's a different generation. He's in his late 70s and he wanted to sell his. And I felt like that was the right step forward. And so we went through an investment process of trying to find people to buy his equity. And it began as a process where it actually began because somebody came to us. And the kind of model of it changed because in the end, I realized that I wanted to fully own it. So we said no to a bunch of private equity offers and I did a management buyout and bought his equity off him.

11:13And then we got five minority investors to buy the rest. Amazing. Congratulations. That's so exciting. Really exciting. Okay. So, well, that's rewinding back to 2015 or whenever you ended up launching it. You renamed it Hansa G, which no one would ever know it was never always called that, but for Georgiana. So how did you do it? Did you connect? Did you go to, A, what was the original concept when you relaunched? And B, what kind of stores did you mostly sell online? How did you distribute? you? It was super, super organic. So I started, I opened an Instagram account. I did a shoot. I picked kind of five styles that I thought were best, which felt like a move on from the 80s.

12:10And we just launched like that. And within the first six months, it definitely kind of like we ended up gaining huge momentum. It was really an Instagram first brand, you know, it costs nothing to open an Instagram account. And so many interesting people found us, I think, because Krinkle just didn't exist, then it really broke through the noise. And as a category, it didn't exist. This like this category of swimwear didn't exist. But also, there was really only high street or luxury there wasn't this kind of mid-level democratic aspirational brand so within like a year we had Rihanna wearing it Kim Kardashian Rosie Huntington-Whiteley was buying pieces and this was all like I think through stylists finding it online I had a really great network of girls who wore it and supported me but like also wanted the product people really were hungry for the product we didn't pay anyone we didn't use any influencers um adjuar wore it clara paget wore it georgia made jagger and it sort of like took off very organically which i think was a real blessing because i didn't sit down with a huge business plan which might not which isn't necessarily my vibe or wasn't my vibe then and it might have intimidated me um i was able to just very organically find my way with it you know I don't have any experience as a designer but I'm still the designer of Hunza I do all the design and so I just kind of was able to teach myself whilst I'm sure making mistakes along the way but there was no marketing budget there was no PR so there was kind of no pressure I was able to just really follow my gut and people just really wanted that product and the one size was just um such a unique proposition for people shopping on a website and then it was the performance element of the product you know women who'd maybe just had a baby or weren't feeling super confident about their body would put on this tubular product and it would kind of like suck in everything that they didn't want to feel vulnerable about and um the feedback was just amazing.

14:32So we very quickly got wholesalers coming to us. Our first wholesaler was Selfridges, then it was Net-a-Porter, and that was again all organic. I didn't reach out to anyone. They found us. And it just sort of snowballed from there.

15:01We take your first order provision to the first order. FlatEx. Better to right-handle. Investing has a risk risk. Bedingungen are known to external costs. The price falls on.

15:14Early on, one of the things I think, and we'll talk about the material, but one of the things I think you did really well was color. and I know you're saying you worked on instinct, but I do think that is such an important part of the swimwear market of like having the right, it's almost like cars, like every new year of a, of, of a car, you see them tweak the colors a little and you're like, Oh, I see that they, they use the Pantone color of the year for inspiration for this new color of the fleet of cars or whatever. But how much did color play into, because you mentioned it was a very limited color palette when it was big in the 80s.

16:01How much of that did you play with in terms of making sure the colors felt like right for the times? Because my first Hunza G was like a lavender color that was like really specifically of the year I bought it, I feel. it's really interesting that you say that because I've never I never looked at anything to do with like trend I always felt like that would um you know make my brain work backwards I try not to look at kind of trend but then um color was a huge thing for me because I felt like that was like part of the missing piece a I don't think any brands in the 80s were truly diverse or inclusive it just wasn't front of mind and when I started Hansa that was something that I really wanted it to encapsulate.

16:51And that wasn't in a performative way. I was just like, I want as many different types of women wearing this product and feeling great in it because I know it has this performance element that makes people feel fabulous. So it really was just a desire to find also colour that worked on multiple skin tones. And there are lots of colours in swim that really don't work. Like chartreuse kind of looks awful on most people, but it's an incredible colour for silk, let's say. You know, it's like it crinkle and swimwear is very different. And it's a bit more like lingerie. It's like something that close to your body has to be flattering and it has to work on multiple skin tones.

17:28So I really like took that away with me. I've got two sisters and a mother. We all have different body shapes, even though we're all from the same family. I really wanted to have lots of different friends from different backgrounds. I really wanted to think about like what colors would look good on a variety of people. and then I just thought Hansa was lacking these kind of neutrals and when we did relaunch with a whole load of neutrals me and Peter had a bet because he said that he thought that the colors that I'd picked were um like quite gross uh he was like I don't think anyone's gonna buy these because I did a sort of mango sorbet an aubergine and a forest green as like the second drop yeah And the theme of the collection was Northern Soul.

18:13We had a playlist and it was shot in the Barbican and it felt very 70s. And he was like, I just I don't get it at all. Like, where's where's the bright pink? Where's the orange? Where's, you know, and it sold really, really well. So we always just try, I always try and find the best color of a version that I want to explore. And it goes through multiple lab dips. So like to get our moss green, I probably did 20 lab dips or something. You know, I'm very meticulous about the color. Wow, that's, it's so funny because the colors you just mentioned feel so good to me. and that the fact I understand what he's saying but it's um it must have been really fun to work with him for the last 10 years and it must have been amazing for him as like a real garment guy to see this thing he created just like have a second life I think 100 and look he was like um super supportive because he also was like you know I'm from a different generation I had my version of it and we we had a very like a good relationship as in all these conversations were kind of more like oh lol I don't I don't think I know what people want anymore because that color to me looks terrible but let's see if anyone buys it you know like it was it was it was more of a like um fun competitive conversation rather than uh anything else and he was just like loving being on the ride as as you say like it was really fun for him to see a second life and you know he really did create something amazing like he created this category in the 80s it's a it's a category defining swimwear brand like he created that he found the crinkle he used it in swimwear he had these iconic moments in the 80s that really set us apart from other swimwear brands and give us this a the heritage but also a feeling of less of a single product brand that has no energy or personality like Hanza has such a personality and that's what swimwear brands didn't really have before um like it it gives you a feeling and the imagery is different to other swimwear brands imagery and of course we've been copied a lot so you do see more of it now but when we launched in 2015, there was nothing like it.

20:35And in 1984, there was nothing like it. I want to talk about how you kind of manage the copying because it's rampant in a way that I feel like, especially because it is about this material. But before we get there, you jump in, distribution comes fairly easily. People are into it. People like it. What did you learn about the market for swimwear because it reminds me of like prom. There are certain categories in fashion that have like a whole other world. You could say kids is like this swimwear, prom, activewear that they like all the big brands do. They do formal wear, they do bathing suits often.

21:26They'll do sporty stuff, but this is like a whole other world. You can go to trade shows dedicated to this stuff. There are fashion weeks dedicated to swim. You kind of came at it to me as like more of a fashion proposition that happens to be. I'm interviewing Danielle Frankel, the bridal designer, in a couple of weeks. And it's a similar thing to me that like, yes, it's a bridal brand and she engages with the bridal community, but the reality is like, she comes at it from like, it's a fashion brand that happens to do bridal. But what did you think of the like swimwear community once you started doing this and like, and saw it with your own eyes?

22:11Yeah. I think like you, you know, one of the phrases I always use, you've just like you've just said so it's like really like nice to hear that it comes across like that it's like we are a like product we're a swimwear brand that's fashion led like that we work like a fashion house like I did stuff in seasons and gave them playlists and gave them themes and gave them sets you know so it was very different to the swim world that we entered where everything looked like it was shot on a white model with a six pack on a on a on a nameless beach in Australia like that was how swim looked to me and I think to most people in 2015 it looked like a catalogue of um things that you just don't remember it didn't look like fashion shoots it didn't look editorial it didn't look inclusive and um it looked one-dimensional uh and we really wanted to go in having worked for camilla and having worked for the menswear designer and my mom had um been grace coddington's assistant at vogue like oh wow that's so cool yeah like i just had a different opinion of what this could be and also we had done the ready to wear in the 80s so I didn't see us as just and we had these iconic moments and they were actually more in the ready to wear that was like Julia Roberts it was Whitney Houston so I had this like already feeling that we were more than just a swimwear brand and that I didn't want it to to be unrecognizable so we entered and we did these shoots that did have themes and you know we did one that um was like set in it looked like it was set in Yves Saint Laurent's garden in Morocco which is like just for me that's not even for anybody else it's just it's not even on a beach and there was a whole playlist no one hears the playlist um but everything fits together like a world and i don't think people were creating kind of editorial worlds for swim i think they do do that now because they know that there's a huge opportunity as a category like when we started swim wasn't a huge category and neither was resort wear to be honest you had those incredible brands like zimmerman and then you had like errors and then that was kind of it like you didn't really have anything else um and they're the top top end and then there was like high street so I felt like there was a place for us somewhere in the middle that felt aspirational that created more of a feeling and an energy and just going on holiday has turned into something that with Instagram has become the most performative part of people's lives.

24:56Like when I went on holidays when I was younger with my parents or my parents' friends, nobody was posting pictures of themselves. People went in their worst swimwear and ate the most amount of pasta they possibly could. It was not like an exhibitionist kind of adventure. It was like a switch off. That's not the case anymore. And that plays into swim's favor is that that is people's most photographed moment, whether you're a normal person or a celebrity or you know it's um it's what people want to showcase so i think i kind of realized that quite quickly as well and uh we especially had that in covid um you know like we switched off our factory a week into covid because we thought no one would want to buy swimwear and we on day kind of nine of lockdown we'd never had more sales um and people were buying hunza because it made them feel good it was colorful and they didn't know how long they were going to be in lockdown but because of the one size they knew that the product could last them whether they like were going to get pregnant not get pregnant go to the gym loads you know people had their own covid journeys but everybody took photos of themselves like leaning in a strip of sun on a balcony in london in their hunza it was wild like everybody wanted to show themselves kind of relaxing so yeah i feel like as a category it's changed like monumentally um from when we began.

26:27So it's the crinkle in particular. Let's talk about the copies and how you've sort of managed that because so there's two things going on. One is that there's a bigger trend in fashion of crinkly fabrics that are not all exactly like what you do. Like Mara Hoffman, for instance, a brand that doesn't exist anymore, did a crinkle that was like chunkier than yours and, and just like a different approach to it. Um, but like kind of textured fabrics have become a really big thing in fashion in the last decade. Your influence on that is very clear. So there's like the greater sort of trend towards that kind of material.

27:08And then there are just like tons of knockoffs of, of the material you do in particular in swimwear and beyond. And look, this happens to every brand. I just did a story this past week about Quince, this retailer in the US that just their whole business is knocking people off. This isn't a new thing. But how have you managed that? Is it about imparting to the consumer the high quality and the originality of the garments? Is it the fashion element? Like, how do you deal with the fact that everybody's just like literally copying your exact designs and concept? I think it's like multiple things. Firstly, like you learn to get better at it as the more it happens.

28:01You like the first time, you know, when I was like super green, I was like, we should send a lawyer's letter. And like, we weren't even big enough to think like that, but you also just, don't want to, to be honest, you don't want to waste any time and energy on it. Like it is a natural thing that if you're doing something right, people are going to copy you. Like it's, it's as everyone says, it's frustrating, but it's really, really flattering. I think it becomes dangerous if it begins to cannibalize your own business, or you feel like those customers are going to these other brands. And I think for, for us, what we've tried to do, um, is always keep moving and we are the original like we have existed before anybody else there isn't that gives us a huge step ahead we've also kind of like the fabric that we have worked on we have reworked and reworked and reworked and the feedback that we get is that it is the best out there in terms of performance like when we were making it perfect so that it would stretch and recover and stretch and recover and have this performance element for women you know we reworked on it five years ago and we rejected fabric for a whole year you know like we really do take our proposition seriously as being like the best crinkle out there so our fabric is different to other people's and then it is the fashion element like I feel the designs that we have done in the last 10 years have really moved hands are on whether it's like hardware we've been copied so much with the swim that rosie wore which was the first you know um swim with the tortoiseshell hoops the one that we do that has bows up the sides you know that there's no swim that's ever had that design before and it's trademarked but it still gets copied we just launched a really exciting thing for us was we just launched a gingham collection this summer um which performed outperformed itself and it's not a predominantly crinkle collection it kind of sits alongside crinkle and some of it has is crinkle with gingham trim but it's a new fabric that's uv protective and um it's uv protective fast drying you can swim in all of the ready to wear and it was just like a really exciting thing to do the headscarf we're selling so well like we can't keep it in stock the whole of the black and white sold out so I feel like it's about keeping like moving forwards constantly with these things that that that create the energy around the core product which is crinkle but other brands aren't doing that they are just copying what we did two years ago and then um you know waiting to see what we do next and I do feel like in a weird way it really keeps my own momentum going like as the designer like I'm I am worried about it I don't I haven't got to a point ever where there's been a brand that I felt threatened by but as a general concept I'm constantly concerned by it which constantly makes me try and think of new ways to make us move forward.

31:02So it's almost like a helpful, but annoying cycle, but a necessary one for us to keep doing what we do best. Yeah. I mean, I worry all the time too. Like that's what people who are ambitious and push themselves. So I understand what you mean. And I think it reminds me of High Sport, which is a brand based here in the US that I bet you've engaged with, but it's not as well known in London in particular, but Alyssa's pants have been knocked off a million times. And the thing is like, yeah, she still sells the pants. And the reality of it is because of people copying you, more people know about you.

31:45So there's like a good thing about it. But then there is the thing of like, well, you can't be complacent. You got to push forward. And I see that in the work you've done. And also I think like once people trust a brand, especially in swim, for instance, they just go back to that person and they think, okay, you know what? This is my person or my brand and it's the right one for me. But it is interesting to see you move beyond the crinkle into different materials and then also into ready to wear to a bit. how do you like, because Zimmerman at one point 20 years ago was just a bathing suit brand, or they started mostly bathing suits.

32:34And now I don't even know if many of their customers know they make bathing suits. Do you, do you think, I mean, it's so hard to know, but like, where do you see it, see it evolving? Do you want to do more ready to wear what, what would be sort of the next step? Because you already have, you know, this very robust swimwear roster or offering, and then you also do kids, you have accessories, you have so many different things already. What would be the sort of, what do you think the path is as you move forward, especially now that you own the company? I think like, I think we'll always be a swimwear first brand.

33:13I think that like, because we defined a category, it would, it wouldn't make sense for us to start trying to kind of move away from that I I love being the swimwear brand like I think swimwear is amazing and interesting and you know you can go into other categories but I don't see them as being bigger than our core business but things like the gingham reinvigorate the core business and also you're just creating great product that people can wear and use um and we've made like the uv protective swimwear and that sold like crazily well this summer we had a article in the new york times and then it all sold out in sort of a week like we we so people do want to buy non-crinkle product from us but i think the evergreen concept will always be that we are a crinkle first business um we will you know we make like things like sunglasses cases in the crinkle i think there's more to be done with it i made myself um a laptop case the other day and it was like and it's like the best laptop case ever because it's like stretches over your computer it looks really cool and you can squid it up really small um so i think there's like fun things to do with crinkle next year we've got some really really exciting products um projects coming out we've got some collaborations which i think will just like really really uh put our stake in the ground again that we are a swimwear brand but they're you know they're really exciting I can't say what they are but um I can't wait for everyone to see them but I do think there's a place for ready to wear as long as it's slightly technical and it goes with the swimwear I think Zimmerman is different because they're you know their their designs are so incredible and kind of like couture-esque um and that's definitely not our path I see us as more of a kind of on running a sort of skims a sort of birkenstock a ray-ban vibe like i think that will always be quite a product focused brand um and then we'll do these interesting things because they're fun to do people want to buy them but they will just prop up crinkle yeah what is what is the top style of everything and has it changed over over the time no it's the square neck it's the classic square neck is like our best-selling style and color wise it's like black or bubble gum and then that might change for a week here or there but overall it's black and bubble gum square necks and then we get you know when we launch the gingham that's you know those products are at the top of the best-selling list for like a couple of months but as a general the square neck i redesigned the shape of it maybe two years into original into um hanza g so in probably 2018, I redesigned the shape completely and it's been the top selling product since then.

36:11So it's never changed. It's amazing. That's amazing. Has it been fun for you as a mother to see so many women wear them like pre, during and post? Because that's when I first bought one was when I was pregnant and I was living in Los Angeles and had to be in a bathing suit while I was pregnant, which would have never happened if I lived in New York. But I and my friend said, oh, you should get one of those Hunza G swimsuits. They are like expandable, essentially. And I was amazed. It was so fun. Yeah, I think I think it's just I think it's just like getting the feedback from women about a shopping on a website where you're not having to like work out your size, which is like, you know, you eliminate size trauma whilst shopping for yourself which is just like such a nice thing to do for people and then actually a product that you know when you could be feeling vulnerable makes you feel really great like our sort of internal thing is like everyone feels like a supermodel in their hunza even if you're not like at my worst I feel my best in a hunza you know if I had to wear a swimming costume as you say so I think it's just like that feedback from women daily is really inspiring um and yeah kind of makes it all make makes it all worth it I love seeing people wear it pregnant and then post pregnancy I love seeing like I've got I've become really cheesy I I didn't think I'd do kind of matching mummy and me vibes and certainly not myself but I'm like my daughter's gonna have to have lots of therapy because she's constantly being asked to pose with me in Hunza G's that match on holiday, you know?

37:54I mean, you look adorable, but also I have a son and I make, I match with him all the time. Like, I'm like, let's all, let's both wear pink today. Yeah. I think I've seen that. Um, no, it's, it's crazy. The minute you become a parent, you know, all of your like ideas of how you're going to be go out the window and you just become really soppy in a really nice way true well if you make some um hanza g swimming trunks fritz will definitely wear them you know i i actually i so post post frank who's my first child you know you're always a bit mad fritz and frank we discussed this great yeah you're always a bit mad having just given birth and i was like oh gosh it's a boy i must make something from Hansa for him.

38:43So I made the team make 500 little hot pants that I thought I thought they'd sell like hotcakes. They were like skimpies for baby boys. And I think we sold like two. It's the only bad decision, really bad kind of commercial decision I think I've ever made. But it was hilarious. So he's worn them. Oh, my God, that's so cute. Well, I'm glad I'm glad Frank was able able to to wear them even though sometimes the things you love the most anyway um this was so fun congratulations on everything thank you so much it's such a cool brand and the story there's just no stories like this in fashion i love the story so much that you were obsessed with it as a kid and you met this guy you met the guy and you were able to build rebuild it with him and then now you own it.

39:38It's a really fun. And also just coming from the UK, which no one thinks of as like, I guess they think of it as a swim bathing community, but probably not a beach. I mean, Bath and there are places, but it's not the place that you expect a swimwear brand to come out of. So it's such a unique story. It says so much about the culture of the UK to manufacture. I love that. It's really fun. Thank you so much. Well, thank you so much for having me. It was really, it was really fun. It was such a pleasure. Fashion People is a presentation of Odyssey in partnership with Puck. This show was produced and edited by Molly Nugent.

40:23Special thanks to our executive producers, Puck co-founder John Kelly, executive editor Ben Landy and director of editorial operations, Gobby Grossman. An additional thanks to the team at Odyssey, J.D. Crowley, Jenna Weiss-Berman, and Bob Tabador.