Bevan’s Clothing-Surf Wear
(E.G. Platt’s Surfwear) or with the Billabong label Gordon Merchant and his then wife Rena travelled around selling board shorts to surf shops.. Rip Curl started with wetsuits and Quiksilver was the USA brand that spread globally.
This collection is something very close to our bodies! What we wore as the surf clothing companies controlled 75% of the market. It all started with a couple of Mum’s making board shorts for their sons and his mates
The growth was slow at first but by the seventies every kid wanted a surf brand tee shirt and board shorts. New brands started up every week and the war of the clothing began. The major labels would only supply one shop in each town or within a certain radius, so if you were the first in you had a huge advantage over any late starters so the later shops stocked the lessor known brands until they found these labels grew to be a major player.
Let’s regress a bit, when I operated my first surf shop, we sold wax and towels and the boards were 9’6″ long and weighed 30lbs so we would charge 20 cents to store your board at the beach. If you lived any further than 2 or 3 miles from the surf these boards were just too heavy to carry. I remember the first time Gordon & Rena Merchant pulled up with their panel van full of board shorts and we gave them a try. They sold out after the first weekend, the birth of surf brands had begun.
The images are mainly jackets but there will be more to come.
You can check out his items for sale on his website. http://www.vaultvintage.co
