Forget Brexit — the great UK/EU divide is a question of men’s briefs.
As ever, our Italian, Spanish, German — you name it — counterparts are busy populating the continent’s pebbled coves and sandy beaches with their bare inner thighs, reclining in skimpy Speedos (their girlfriends not, for the record, usually far away). In France, long trunks are even banned in many pools for hygiene reasons. When it comes to spotting a British gentleman abroad, however, it’s easy: simply look for a gentle burn, Ralph Lauren cap, and a trusty pair of Vilebrequin printed board shorts.
But there appears to be rumblings of change. The whispers say Brits are getting braver. The stats hint they might be correct. Are we really ready to start baring all on the beach?
The buzz truly began in July, when The White Lotus’s everyman-hunk Theo James sent the internet into a spiral as the paparazzi caught him in barely-there white briefs modelling a new Dolce & Gabbana campaign in Capri. Then came the Olympics, a viral picture of Tom Daley and his swimming pool gang with black budgie smugglers and Alpine abs, before the French diver Jules Bouyer (who boasted huge talent in more areas than his 2 ½ somersault pikes) sent Google searches for his name up 10,200 per cent. In all, research by fashion shopping app Lyst found year-on-year searches for budgie smugglers are up 89 per cent, and those for Speedos more than doubled.
But are our boys actually daring to splash out? Apparently. Abtany, the London-based men’s swimwear brand, has recorded an 85 per cent surge in the sales of £140 swim briefs between 2022 and 2024. “I really struggled to find high-quality briefs. There are a lot of comical prints out there,” founder Sourena Ghaffari says. Exhibit A: Mike Tindall’s. “Instead, I’m offering a luxurious brief,” he adds.
Other labels, including Burberry, Versace, and, fresh this summer, David Koma’s new Let’s Swim line, all offer their own iteration; at the affordable end Nike, Adidas and, of course, Speedo all make them around £20.
Ghaffari was sure to cater for more shy customers, too. “A lot of people, including myself, like to sunbathe and swim in briefs, but I don’t like to walk around in them. We make matching shorts to layer up so you can go to a restaurant without an outfit change.”
This weighing sense of body-consciousness has not always been so. Sports briefs first gained notoriety in the Fifties, when the then lesser-known Australian swimwear label Speedo sponsored the men’s swim team at the 1957 Melbourne Summer Olympics. They collected eight gold medals in their budgie smugglers, and subsequently sent them global. By the Sixties, the no-drag design made them synonymous with water sport professionals, before they evolved into a bright, fashion statement in the Seventies. The following decade, with Club Tropicana blaring, skimpy swimmers hit their peak.
Sportsmen and gays never really let them go, but more conservative shorts later took precedence, since remaining men’s bathers of choice; this despite valiant efforts from both Daniel Craig, who sported them as Bond in 2006’s Casino Royale, and David Gandy, who wore white pairs in his infamous Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue fragrance ads which started in 2007 (and continue today).
More than a decade later, celebrity stylist Luke Day suggests “they are making a tentative comeback as an ally of the short-shorts [trend]”. Celebrities in micro-shorts — culprits include Paul Mescal and Chris Pine — have instigated so-called “slutty short short summer”. “You’ve got to have a certain confidence to pull budgie smugglers off, but I think men’s most invested fashion accessory is their body at the moment — they want to show it off.”
Others proclaim their anti-fashion quality. Tom Stubbs, another stylist and lifelong fan, says “the man on the beach in Speedos doesn’t care about your trend notions of ‘in’ or ‘out’; he’s just going right out there to swim the bay. They offer total freedom and ease of movement.”
As for the public? A non-scientific poll among friends and family proved it a split pool, and uncovered a host of anxieties. These ranged from uncontrolled body hair (“I would just sit worrying about my pubes falling out”) to body image (“only if I worked on my rig”), age (“you get all the wrong sort of looks if you’re a middle-aged bloke with a middle-aged spread”), and consciousness over endowment (“I’m a grower, not a shower — If I could, I certainly would.”)
However, almost half were game to lean in. Alec, a 22-year-old rugby-playing university student, swears by his, while account manager James, 25, wonders “Why not? It’s something a bit different.”
Nobody goes to the beach to be stressed, of course, but if you have niggling feeling budgies might actually be quite fun… now is the time to dip your toe in water.
The best budgie smugglers:
