Home to some of the hottest and most humid places on the planet, the equator carves through dense tropical jungles, warm seas, and crowded cities. Instead of seasons or temperature changes you’re more likely to be hit by a wall of heat, sun, rain and humidity. So the Equator Swim Shorts are built to keep you comfortable in all 40,000km of one of the most extreme environments we currently inhabit. They’re highly elastic, durable, fast drying, and built to cool you down.

As global temperatures rise and climate zones shift, designing clothing for the equator is like designing for our future. So every pair of Equator Swim Shorts is embedded with thermoreactive microparticles – a skin-cooling technology invented for elite triathletes. It’s not the kind of technology you’d normally find in a pair of swim shorts.

Built to work under stress from water, heat, sweat and rapidly changing environments, thermoreactive microparticles are embedded directly into the material to help cool your skin. Made from bioceramics, they interact with body heat to generate far-infrared light, which promotes blood flow by improving venous microcirculation. This encourages your body to thermoregulate, lowering your chances of overheating. Since the microparticles are fused into the material they won’t rub or wash out.

The material starts life at a cutting-edge lab next to three of Italy’s most iconic lakes – Como, Lugano and Maggiore. It’s here that some of the most advanced performance materials on the planet are being developed (and where clients include Tour de France cyclists). Advances in material technology are now helping riders cope with rising temperatures in what’s already one of the world’s most brutal races.

Woven with 31% elastane, the Equator Swim Shorts are insanely stretchy, as the last thing you want in extreme heat is to feel restricted by your clothes. And they stretch in every direction so there’s no move you can pull where they won’t follow you. If you do somehow manage to pull the shorts in opposite directions at the same time, you’ll find they simply snap right back into their original shape.

The shorts are treated with a durable water repellent coating that’s completely free from toxic fluorocarbons. Ocean spray will simply roll off them. And the same technology means the shorts dry rapidly out of the water, especially in direct sunlight.

We’ve lined the Equator Swim Shorts with an amazingly soft Italian mesh that sits next to your skin, so you stay comfortable from the inside out. Just like the outer material it’s highly breathable, stretchy and fast drying. And it’s treated with an antibacterial finish, so the shorts stay fresh for longer, even when you’re sweating hard.

The materials we’ve worked with are tested and protected against degradation caused by both saltwater and chlorine. So they’re built to handle long days out in the water, whether that’s at the pool or somewhere deep in the Pacific Ocean.

Just like sunblock, fabric can be rated for its ability to reduce your exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet light. The Ultraviolet Protection Factor, or UPF, determines how much more protection your skin would have while wearing that piece of clothing. A UPF rating of 15 for example would give your skin 15x more protection than it would have if it was unprotected. These shorts are so densely knitted that the fabric scores a UPF of 50+ which is the highest possible rating, giving you the highest possible protection.

While the shorts are built from high performance materials, we’ve designed them to fit in anywhere. Their minimalist cut, soft material, practical pockets and secure rope-tied waistband mean they work just as well on land as they do in water.

The Equator Swim Shorts come with two side pockets large enough to hold your phone, cards and keys on land, or a GPS in the water. Both pockets are lined with the same super soft, stretchy and breathable mesh to keep air flowing around your body. On the Sage Green and Coral Pink editions these pockets fasten with concealed zippers that have a rubberised and lockable zip pull.

There’s also a zipped back pocket on the right hand side. It fastens with a lockable zipper protected by a storm flap. And inside the pocket there’s a panel we’ve laser-cut with drainage holes so that water can escape when it needs to.