What do you do when swimwear brands refuse to make functional swim shorts that actually fit? If you’re Clare Barrins, you work a demanding Silicon Valley tech job by day, and spend your nights designing them yourself.
Since launching Sheila back in 2023, she set out to fix the gap for women who just wanted to move in the water without sacrificing fit or style. Fast-forward to today, and the brand is blowing up across Australia and the US, doubling its yearly revenue in just six months. The kicker? She still hasn’t quit her day job.
We caught up with the founder to break down how she scaled an indie brand across two continents, why size inclusivity isn’t as hard as fashion brands pretend it is, and what it’s really like taking the leap.
What was the exact moment you said, ‘Screw it, I’m making swimwear myself’?
Honestly, it wasn’t one lightning-bolt moment — it built up over about two years of low-grade frustration. I was living in the Bay Area, and my weekends were built around water — paddleboarding on Lake Tahoe, swimming with my kids, jumping in a lake after a hike. And every single time, I’d hit the same wall: I couldn’t find a swim short I actually wanted to wear.
The options were either daggy boardshorts from surf brands in a tiny range of sizes, or standard swimwear that wasn’t built for actually moving. I was the woman not going on the girls’ trip, or sitting out while my kids played in the water, because nothing made me feel like I could be part of the action.
The moment it flipped from ‘this is annoying’ to ‘I’m making this myself’ was realising I was willing to spend real money on a luxury swim short, and it still didn’t exist. If I couldn’t buy my way out of the problem, someone had to design their way out of it.
Going from Silicon Valley tech to launching an indie label is huge. What did those early side-hustle days actually look like, and how have they evolved?
The early days were two full-time jobs running in parallel. By day I was working a demanding Silicon Valley tech job; by night — literally most nights — I was building Sheila. Sourcing fabric, working through design and production out of Australia, doing the numbers, all after the kids were in bed.
The trick was the time zones. Working across US and Australian hours meant I could keep the two worlds separate without either one bleeding into the other during the day. I also just don’t think what I was doing was that unusual; plenty of people build something on the side of a demanding job. I didn’t treat it as heroic, I treated it as a second shift.
Today, that hasn’t actually changed as much as people expect — I’m still in my same full-time role, still running Sheila alongside it. What’s changed is the scale of what fits into those same hours: we’ve gone from a single-market, single-category label to an active swimwear brand trading in both Australia and the US. The discipline is the same as it always was; there’s just a lot more riding on it now.
Sheila surpassed its entire 2025 revenue in the first six months of 2026 alone. What shifted to kick off that level of growth?
It’s almost entirely the US. We launched Sheila in Australia in 2023, and it took until 2025 to properly launch into the US market. What we’re seeing in the first half of this year is that foothold finally taking hold — we’ve gone into US summer with real momentum behind us for the first time, rather than still being an unknown quantity in a new market.
Australia gave us the proof of concept and the customer base to build from. The US is where the scale is — and this year is the first time we’ve had a full run-up to the northern hemisphere summer with an established presence there rather than starting from zero. That timing, more than any single tactic, is what’s driving the number.
We haven’t changed who we’re for or what we stand for to get here, either. It’s the same brand, the same values, the same customer — just more of her, in a much bigger market, finally hearing about us at the right time of year.
Size inclusivity is so often treated as an afterthought, but Sheila launched with it on day one. How did you navigate that choice?
I didn’t want to pay lip service to inclusivity. I believe strongly in living your values, not just stating them, so size-inclusive wasn’t a phase-two plan — it was the design brief from day one.
And practically, it was never the obstacle people assume it is. If you’ve got the backing to build a collection at all, sizing up isn’t a technical problem — it’s a decision about how wide you’re willing to go. It wasn’t an issue in my design process, and it wasn’t an issue in my manufacturing process. What is genuinely hard — and what people underestimate — is everything else that goes into doing it properly at a small, independent scale: premium recycled fabric costs more, you’re not buying in huge fast-fashion quantities, and quality takes real investment. That’s the actual financial pressure. Sizing was never the excuse.
It’s also just paid off as a business decision, not only a values one. Our top-selling size is a large, followed by medium and extra-large — which tells me we started in exactly the right place, covering where most women actually are, not where fashion traditionally designs for.
Where do you actually draw design inspiration from when building a new collection?
My own intuition first, customer feedback second, and trend reports a distant third — if at all.
A good example: our Celeste one-piece is one of our most consistent performers, and this season we reworked it — not redesigned it — based on direct feedback from the women wearing it. A slightly longer leg cut so the fabric stops rolling on the thighs. Straps redesigned specifically because shorter-torso customers told us they were slipping. Small changes, but they came straight from real women telling us what wasn’t quite working, not from a trend forecast.
Being across two markets also shapes it. Living and building in the US alongside our Australian base means I get to see two very different swim cultures up close, and the gaps in each — that’s part of what’s pointed us toward things like deeper sun protection and more coverage-first styles, which the Australian market in particular is hungry for.
Design knockoffs are running rampant online right now. How do you future-proof Sheila against copycats?
Touch wood, we haven’t had a direct incident of it — but it’s absolutely something we think about and worry about, not something I’d assume we’re immune to. The smaller and more distinctive you are, the more visible your ideas are to anyone looking to move faster and cheaper than you.
What I’ve come to believe is that you can’t fully design-proof yourself against it. What you can do is build the things that are actually hard to copy: the story behind the brand, the values we genuinely operate by rather than market, the relationships with the women who wear Sheila, and a level of quality and fit testing that a fast follower isn’t going to replicate in a season.
So it’s less a fire we’ve had to put out, and more a reason we keep investing in the parts of Sheila that can’t be screenshotted – the fabric certification, the fit process, the actual relationship with our customer. That’s the future-proofing.
Your latest campaign stars Billie Jean Hamlet, Jessica Vander Leahy, and Clare Tappenden, shot by Simon Upton. What was it like seeing your vision levelled up on set?
Honestly, it was overwhelming — in the best way. It genuinely moved me watching that many people, all top of their field — hair, makeup, styling, the team shooting BTS video, Simon behind the camera — show up and do their absolute best work, on something I’d started at my kitchen table. That’s not something you plan to feel; it caught me off guard.
This collection is the most considered thing we’ve done — our first-ever print, our first textured fabric, seven new styles – and all of it still had to earn its place against the same standard as everything else we make: does it perform, does it hold its shape, does it actually work on a real body. Watching that translate onto a set of that scale, with a cast and crew who could do it justice, was the moment it stopped feeling like a scrappy brand punching above its weight and started feeling like the brand I always intended to build.
Being in a room (or on a beach!) with that level of talent, all pointed at bringing your vision to life, is genuinely one of the most inspiring things I’ve experienced building Sheila. It’s a privilege I don’t take for granted.
@sheila.thelabel Every Sheila piece begins with purpose. Clare shares the story behind creating swimwear that helps women feel confident enough to simply live in the moment. Discover the new collection. 🤍
♬ Smooth Embrace – RB EchoSoul
What’s the single biggest misconception about running a fashion brand?
People don’t always understand what it actually costs to do this properly: sourcing certified recycled fabric instead of the cheapest option, manufacturing in smaller runs instead of huge fast-fashion quantities, fit-testing across a genuinely wide size range, and still trying to keep the product accessible. Every one of those is a deliberate, expensive choice, and none of it is visible in the finished product on your feed.
The other misconception is that founders like me had some kind of head start — money, connections, fame. Most of the people I actually look up to in this space are ordinary people who gave up a stable income to bet on something they believed in. That’s a much less glamorous story than the one people assume, and I think it’s the more honest one.
For anyone sitting at their corporate desk with a side hustle brewing: what’s your #1 piece of advice before taking the leap?
Don’t quit before you’ve proven anyone other than you wants it. I spent close to two years building Sheila alongside a demanding full-time role before it became the business it is today — that wasn’t caution for its own sake, it was using the security of a day job to properly test the idea without the pressure of it needing to work immediately.
Back yourself with data, not just conviction. I’m a details person — I wanted to understand the actual market gap, not just trust that I personally wanted something. If you’re not willing to do the unglamorous research (who else has tried this, why did it work or not work, what would someone actually pay for it), you’re not testing an idea, you’re just hoping.
And find your people early. Some of my best thinking has come from a small group of other founders I check in with regularly — not for hype, but for someone to tell me honestly when an idea isn’t as good as I think it is. Validate the idea, but also validate that you’ve got people around you who’ll tell you the truth.
If you weren’t doing your current job, what would you be doing?
Anna Wintour‘s job, circa her peak at Vogue. Realistically — anything in fashion editorial.
Do you have a work uniform?
I used to live in black — pure Melbourne uniform. California cured me of it. Now it’s a matching pant-and-shirt set, usually Alemais or Zimmermann.
What’s the most unhinged thing you’ve seen at work that we can legally publish?
Someone clipping their toenails at the bathroom sink — and not stopping when I walked in.
Who do you admire in your industry?
The everyday woman starting a business with no fame or money to give her a head start. Building a following from nothing is a much harder kind of grit than building on one you already have.
Describe your inbox in three words.
Organised. Action-only. Filed.
You can shop Sheila The Label here.
Image credits: Sheila The Label
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