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Aug 08, 2023

What swimwear would Helena Christensen wear?

Kate Finnigan We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Fashion news every morning. The Danish supermodel Helena Christensen has been a water lover since childhood, when she swam

Kate Finnigan

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Fashion news every morning.

The Danish supermodel Helena Christensen has been a water lover since childhood, when she swam in rivers in her mother’s native Peru. She’s also a beach obsessive who spends her summers in and out of the sea on the northern coast of Denmark. And she has, of course, been a well-known professional swimsuit wearer for some decades. In other words, she’s a woman who knows a good costume when she sees one. So, when three years ago Christensen posted a photo of herself wearing a one-piece Hunza G costume, Georgiana Huddart, the co-founder of the British swimwear brand, knew it was a true seal of approval. In October, Hunza G and Christensen’s relationship will be cemented with a five-piece capsule collection in her new favourite colour: lilac-and-white stripes chosen and modelled by Christensen.

“It’s just a very cool, smart idea to have a range in one fabric,” confirms Christensen. “And that fabric feels so good because it’s stretchy and the elasticity gives it a kind of tightening effect. It’s very flattering. But I’m a colour obsessive and with Hunza G it was the hues that first caught my eye.

“Swimwear is such an elaborate universe,” she continues. “I have so many bikinis and swimsuits I love because it’s a clothing product that always brings back great memories. And while I love swimsuits that have ribbons and criss-crosses and whatever, what I like about Hunza G is it’s very simple. You just step into it. That’s it. They feel good to wear.”

Hunza’s wrinkly-crinkly, much-copied fabrication has been around since it was founded by Peter Meadows in 1984. Veteran textile-watchers might remember a daring blue-and-white cut-out Hunza dress worn by Julia Roberts in the ’90s film Pretty Woman – reissued in 2021. Huddart rediscovered and relaunched the brand as Hunza G (the G for her first name) in 2015, and it has been growing in popularity ever since.

The fabric is so tactile and unusual

Launching direct-to-consumer online, Hunza grew slowly and steadily through word-of-mouth until Selfridges and then Net-a-Porter came calling. The online retailer, still its biggest wholesaler, placed an order “that changed the business”, says Huddart. Wholesale accounts for 70 per cent of sales of its comprehensive range of colours and styles and, since 2021 (the year WWD declared the brand “the swimwear world’s biggest success story”), childrenswear and towels; it’s found at Selfridges, Harrods, Ssense, Browns, LuisaViaRoma, MatchesFashion and Mytheresa. Revenue is up 40 per cent year-on-year with just over 350,000 units sold, and April 2023 was, Huddart claims, its “best month ever”.

Business minds could never predict that such success began with a dressing-up box. Huddart’s mother had worn swimsuits and dresses by Hunza while pregnant with her six children through the ’80s and ’90s. Eventually the garments found their way into a big box in the nursery that the siblings played with and then didn’t think about for years. But, aged 19, Huddart had a revelation in a second-hand shop in Berlin when she found a rail of vintage Hunza garments. “I bought the lot,” she says. “And whenever I wore any of them people were either triggered by nostalgia or really intrigued because the fabric is so tactile and unusual and distinguishable.”

The history of art graduate tried to recreate similar pieces for herself in between working in fashion and interiors, but she could never source exactly the right textile. (Even today, the brand closely guards the whereabouts of its European factory because of the fierce amount of competition from other brands.) A lucky encounter at a party led to an introduction to Meadows, who was happy for Huddart to resurrect it. They became partners almost immediately (he has since stepped back), and relaunched the brand.

“At that point there had been nothing for people who didn’t want to look like they were in an ’80s athletics video,” says Huddart. “Back then they didn’t even do black and white, which is crazy to me. Black has been our bestselling colour for nearly two years.”

Further boosts have been provided by a stream of authentic celebrity endorsements. Without being gifted product, famous faces – or rather famous bodies – have found their way into Hunza G swimwear and then been happy to shout about it. “Five years ago, we had Rihanna wearing it,” says Huddart. “Kim Kardashian, that was huge. And when Rosie Huntington-Whiteley wore it and tagged the brand the website crashed for two days.” Its first ever celebrity collaboration was done with Huntington-Whiteley earlier this year – Christensen’s has followed soon after.

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You can’t speak to a supermodel without asking her to share how to look great in swimwear. Sublime genes, of course, is the real answer, but sweetly Christensen offers us hope. “Training! That’s the secret,” she says, with a laugh. “I’m not obsessive but I go to a boxing gym three times a week when I’m in New York. It’s the best workout for me. It’s intense but that’s what I want. I can’t do a gym workout or yoga.”

She will also swim anywhere, anytime. “If I see a water hole by the road in December I’ll stop the car and go for a swim. I don’t care how cold it is,” she says. So where will she be wearing Hunza G next? “Actually, I wore a strapless bubble-gum-pink style yesterday here in New York City, just out on the street,” she says. “I wore it with a skirt because they’re pretty good bodysuits too. Women kept stopping me to ask where I got my top.” Huddart might tell them that it came from a dressing-up box.