Second skin
- 22 hours ago
- 6 min read
Words by Hannah Tapping
Timeless, flattering silhouettes combine with skin-friendly materials so there is no longer a need to choose between feeling and looking good.
Ingenuity often finds form in the most unusual of places, and rather than a design studio brief or a market research exercise, some businesses begin from a more personal experience. For Freya Bickford, the founder of Solpardus, that moment came during a lockdown summer.
Having had psoriasis since she was young, the trauma of lockdown was taking its toll. Stress, as so many with the condition will recognise, is its great accelerant, and 2021 had been a year of considerable sadness for Freya, and her skin, had understandably, rebelled. Freya had always found that gentle sun exposure really helped, as had the simple pastime of sitting outside reading a book. However, when donning her usual swimwear Freya found that the non-natural fabrics proved to be an irritant, causing considerable skin flare-ups.
So, Freya went in search of an alternative, but found only one brand in Los Angeles and one in Australia making anything close to what she needed. In the UK, for all its coastal credentials, there was nothing. Performance fabrics that had transformed sportswear and bamboo jersey that had revolutionised active-wear and underwear, had not, it seemed, been brought to bear on the thing that sits closest to the skin for the longest hours of the most relaxing days of the year– swimwear. With no formal training in textiles, Freya took matters into her own hands and ordered some soft bamboo fabric, running up a bikini on her old sewing machine at the kitchen table. And so, the first iteration of the Solpardus Thea bikini was created.
The name Solpardus – from the Latin for sun leopard – arrived via an unexpected route. When Freya was in the early stages of building the brand, still navigating the strange, often lonely experience of having a visible skin condition in a culture that rarely speaks openly about such things, she found solace in the community she’d discovered on social media. These were people who lived with psoriasis or eczema, and understood the particular exhaustion of it all.
“I needed comfort, but still wanted to look good and feel confident,” says Freya. “I knew I didn’t want anything synthetic, as any woman can attest to how tight, restrictive and uncomfortable traditional swimwear is! The bikini allowed me to comfortably sit outside, helping my psoriasis patches move into the pale leopard spots often seen when flares begin healing. I made the bikini to solve my own problem but, having connected with psoriasis and eczema communities through social media, I knew this was something other people wanted, too. In the past I had felt self-conscious about the pigment disparities, but social media comments encouraged me to take pride in them as a reflection of my strength and progress. When I decided to launch the business, I knew this was exactly the confidence I wanted my new brand to embody. And so, under the Cornish sun, Solpardus was born.”
For Freya, who had spent the better part of two decades unable even to say the word psoriasis aloud, and who had felt the particular shame of a condition that declares itself so publicly on the skin, this reframe was significant and the basis for her brand identity. “I had got to the point back then, where it was something I was so embarrassed by. But now I see it as a real benefit, otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.” And Freya, is by any measure, very much here, as we sit across a table talking about bamboo fabric and button detailing and the precise degree of floppiness required in a sunhat with the same easy openness that she brings to the harder parts of her story. The psoriasis has not gone away, she suspects it never will entirely. However, what she has learned, as many do with time, is to read it rather than fight it. When her skin begins to flare, she tells me, she takes it as a signal that she needs to take a step back and reset.
It is worth pausing, here, on the fabric question because it is central to everything Solpardus does and yet, as Freya rightly observes, it is a conversation the industry has been curiously reluctant to have. “So many people think about what they put on their skin, from makeup and skincare to moisturisers and fragrances. However, nobody really talks about the clothes that sit intimately against your skin all day. It’s only when you have a skin issue that you might start to think more about it.” Her research led her to find a buttery soft, bamboo jersey that is breathable, antimicrobial, durable and renewable. As such, Solpardus swimwear is designed to move with the body, not restrict it, offering comfort without sacrificing style.
The wider collection is designed in linen, which is also breathable, antimicrobial and durable, as well as being fast-drying and excellent at keeping you cool in summer and warm in winter. Solpardus linen clothing is soft on the skin and provides the perfect loungewear to throw on after time in the sun, in the water or on cool evenings. As with everything Freya does, this collection was designed with intention, partly for aesthetic reasons and partly practical ones. Freya wanted to ensure that all Solpardus editorial photography used only her own pieces rather than styling items from brands she knew nothing about.
The swimwear itself is constructed with ultimate attention to detail. The double layer of fabric mean that seams sit on the inside, while fully adjustable tie straps allow the garment to work across a wider range of bust sizes than conventional swimwear. There are no abrasive clips or fasteners to be seen, each Solpardus piece comes a small square of offcut bamboo fabric, screen-printed by hand with its care instructions to avoid irritating labels and even the hygiene strip is made of natural material. The cut is timeless across all of this capsule collection. A low-backed one-piece with a quality Freya describes as ‘flattering in a way that seems to suit everybody’, is deliberately and unapologetically classic. “I try and make everything as timeless as possible, with the thought that you would look after it and keep it. I want to still be wearing the same thing in my mid-forties that I was wearing in my mid-twenties.”
This is a statement of intent as much as a design philosophy. Fast fashion, with its seasonal churn and its commitment to the disposable, holds no appeal for Freya. She designs for the woman who will take her Solpardus piece from the drawer in five years and feel as special in it as she did the first time she wore it.
Top Left: Atti linen shorts | Top Right: Thea bamboo bikini
Sourcing on any scale is a more complicated business than it appears from the outside and Freya learned this early in the process. She was determined to work with British suppliers and manufacturers, and equally determined – to a degree that might seem almost quixotic in the current retail climate – to understand the provenance of every component. “I wanted to have an input in how everything was made and to feel confident in the Solpardus narrative.”
Even the buttons carry a story. In creating the linen shirt that anchors the Solpardus collection – a piece that is equally as easy to throw over a swimsuit in the morning as it is to wear to dinner – Freya searched for natural alternatives to the synthetic buttons that sit, often unnoticed, on almost every garment in existence. Her search led her to Gloucestershire-based Courtney & Co, who make buttons from entirely natural materials. For the shirt, each one is cast from either a corozo nut or British milk, one matt, shiny. They alternate on each garment, a detail invisible to most, but one that is testament to the care taken by Freya at every step.
Solpardus operates from Freya’s home office in south Cornwall. She packs every order herself, wraps each piece in recycled tissue paper, seals it with a stamp made from wood pulp rather than plastic, stamps her branding onto the box by hand, and writes her own notes to go inside. These are not romantic affectations: “I want my customer to open the box and feel that it’s been packed with care, especially for them and see that there is a person behind the brand.”
Solpardus is the first, and only, all-natural, bamboo swimwear brand in the UK. The brand’s timeless capsule collection is comprised of bamboo swimwear and linen clothing. Solpardus swimwear comes in two choices: the Thea bikini and the Thea one-piece, both in terracotta, with a forest green option for the one-piece recently launched. With its range of classic linen clothing, too, Solpardus is challenging the dominance of synthetic, fast fashion while offering a comfortable alternative for people with sensitive skin. The linen clothing range encompasses the Saba shirt in natural, the Atti trousers and Atti shorts in umber, both featuring repurposed silk-sari-fabric drawstrings, the Delphi kimono robe in evergreen, and the Nyx sun hat in a choice of oatmeal or moss.
Images © Imogen Rosemary and Goodrest Studios.
