Launching 2027 · Cornwall

On in the morning. Off at bedtime.

All-day shorts for children who don't stop. Surf, rock pool, hike, cycle, play cricket, trampoline, slip and slide, dance, sit down to tea.

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Nine children on a
Cornish beach behind a striped windbreak, with a sandcastle, a surfboard, a cricket
set and a cool box. — Excited to release our prints soon! They won’t be secret for much longer. AI-generated — our own photographs come when the shorts do.

No liner. No mesh. No undies. No fuss.

What you get

One decision. One short. For all day use.

In and out of the water, all day. Take the second layer out, and nine things change at once.

One layer, not two

Nothing to rub

No liner, no mesh, no gusset. The chafing comes from the overlocked edge of a second layer sitting on the inner thigh. There isn't one.

One layer, not two

Dries far quicker

Two layers hold roughly twice the water. One has half as much to give back, so they're dry while everyone else is still peeling.

One layer, not two

Barely drips

Less water carried out of the pool means less down the legs, less on the car seat, less on your floor.

One layer, not two

Light on

Half the fabric weighs half as much, wet or dry. A child notices this more than an adult does.

One layer, not two

Cooler out of the water

Nothing trapped against the skin on a hot afternoon. The second layer is the part that holds the heat.

Cut close, not loose

Easy to move in

Run, jump, climb, swim. A loose short slides against skin and bunches; a fitted single layer moves with the leg.

Dry enough to stay on

No changing at lunchtime

The reason children get changed halfway through a day out is a cold wet liner. Take it away and the shorts just carry on.

One layer, not two

Washes and dries overnight

Rinse, hang up, wear tomorrow — which is the difference between one pair and packing four.

Prints they pick

Ones they'll actually wear

Children choose by the print, and most brands design as though they don't. Bold, and more of them than a boys' rail usually offers.

These follow from how the garment is built rather than from a test report. We're in factory selection, so there are no samples yet and nothing here is a lab figure. When we have real numbers — dry times, fabric weight, a UPF test — we'll publish those instead, and say which is which. Why we don't print UPF 50+.

Who's making them

Three boys, a bell tent, and a Cornish summer.

Wilde Days is one family, not a company with a marketing department. Sukey and Harry, and three boys who are the reason any of it exists.

We spend our summers living in a bell tent on the Cornish coast. Down to the beach and back twice a day. Fishing, rock pooling, surfing, snorkelling, walking, rounders, cricket, cycling — and then the same again tomorrow.

There is no tumble dryer in a tent. There is nowhere to get changed. Whatever they put on in the morning is what they're still wearing at bedtime, and if it's wet at four o'clock it's wet at eight.

That's the brief. We didn't have to imagine it — we've been washing it out in a bucket for years.

We've spent years trying different options. This summer we finally worked out what the answer was — and then found that nobody makes it.

This brand is built for practicality. For adventurous kids who might like to test the limits — so we want them to be safe. Sukey Holder, founder

3 BOYS

The reason the problem was obvious

BELL TENT

Summers on the Cornish coast, twice a day to the beach

1 LAYER

No liner, no mesh, no gusset — the whole idea

SEP 2026

Wilde Days Ltd incorporated in England and Wales

Building it in the open, including the parts that go wrong. If you've cut a liner out yourself, we'd genuinely like to hear about it — hello@wildedays.com.

Two small boys in buoyancy aids standing in clear shallow water in a rocky cove,
reaching down with a net between them. — Cornwall, summer 2026. Our own photographs, and the walk down twice a day.

A pebble cove on the Cornish coast, families sitting in camping chairs against the
rock, and dozens of stacked stone cairns in the grass in the foreground. — Cornwall, summer 2026. Our own photographs, and the walk down twice a day.

The garment

Two panels, an elastic waistband, two hems.

That's the whole garment and everything we've left out is a part that could rub.

Layers: One. No liner, no mesh, no gusset.
Cut: Close-fitting short boxer length, from a garment we measured rather than guessed at.
Waist: 25 mm enclosed elastic. No drawcord — nothing to catch or knot.
Sizes: 2–4 through 11–12, five sizes.
Fabric: Recycled polyester and elastane. We're specifying certified recycled content and asking every factory for the chain-of-custody paperwork to prove it.
Prints: Collections built around different jobs — one around colours you can pick out under water, one quieter and plainer.

We're choosing a factory now. There are no product photographs on this page because the garment doesn't exist yet, and we'd rather show you the real thing than a render.

The prints

We're redrawing them.

Children choose swimwear by the print, and we'd rather own our artwork outright than licence somebody else's. That work is happening now, and it's going into collections — one built around colours you can still pick out a metre under water, one quieter and plainer for the days that aren't about swimming.

The people on the list see them first, and vote on the first patterns to be released. We'd rather show you finished artwork than a shortlist we're still arguing about — and the vote decides what actually gets printed, because a first run only stretches to a few.

Why we're making them

Some parents cut the lining out.

Most children's swim shorts have a mesh liner sewn inside. It's the part that rubs. It traps sand, it drags on wet skin, and it's the reason a lot of children won't keep their shorts on past lunchtime.

There are guides online teaching parents how to cut it out. That's not a gap in the market so much as a queue of people already solving the problem themselves.

"He has chafing issues in most clothes, but swim trunks are the worst culprit." A parent, in a public review of a children's swim short

Why swim shorts have mesh liners — where they came from, and what to look for instead.

A white mesh liner pulled up and out of the waistband of a blue gingham child's swim short, held against a plain wall. — The liner, lifted out of a pair of our own. This is the part that rubs.

Something we found

You can't see blue swimwear under water.

While choosing prints, we modelled how each one would look on a child a metre or two down — in a pool, and in British open water. The differences were larger than we expected, and they run counter to what most children's swimwear is actually made in.

Depth 0.0 m

Depth in metres

Surface1 m2 m3 m

Drag it down. Saturated pink and orange hold on longest. Pale creams wash out into sunlight and foam. Blue — the single most common colour in children's swimwear — goes first, because it is the colour of the water it's in.

Swimwear colour is not a safety device. It doesn't prevent drowning and it doesn't replace supervision. What a high-visibility colour does is shorten the time it takes an adult who is already looking to find a child under the surface.

Read the full findings — what we tested, what we found, and how to judge any swimsuit you already own.

Things worth knowing

Five honest pages, whoever you buy from.

We would rather be useful now than sell you something in 2027. None of these need you to buy anything.

Why swim shorts have mesh liners Where they came from, why they cause trouble, and what to look for instead. What colour can you see under water? We modelled eight prints at depth. Blue is close to invisible. What size does my child need? Age labels are not measurements, and sizing up usually backfires on swimwear. What UPF 50+ actually means A rating measured dry, new and unstretched. Ours doesn't carry one — here's why. Our working Every study we've run, and the AI mock-ups we design from — labelled, so you can tell which is which.

First look, and first go

The list decides which patterns come first.

You see every print before anyone else and vote on which ones we make. And when the first run is ready, the list buys first — before we open it to everyone. The first run will be a few hundred pairs across five sizes, so that head start is worth having.

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