In Wetsuit Design, the Question is Always: What's Next?

The thought of surfing during the wintertime with only a pair of boardshorts, a wool sweatshirt, and a bonfire on the beach sends shivers down my spine. If that was still the case, I probably would never surf during the winter, and most of my friends can say the same. That’s why the wetsuit, considering where we live and the quality of surf generated in the cold winter months, is probably the second most important ingredient to a surfer’s life, next to the surfboard itself. And like the surfboard, the wetsuit is rapidly evolving as new materials and techniques are pioneered.
The wetsuit’s origins are disputed, but they can be traced either to Santa Cruz with Jack O’Neill or to Los Angeles with the founders of Body Glove, the Meistrell twins, in the early 1950s. Tales abound within the surf scene about what surfing was like before neoprene’s universal usage. People would wear what they could; cut up tires, jackets with water sealer, and really anything that would allow them to stay in the water for longer periods. But wetsuits are no longer the makeshift creations they once were.
Neoprene came into existence in the early 1930s. Wallace Carothers, an Iowa born Harvard professor who went on to work for Dupont, led a team of chemists to neoprene’s creation. Carothers and his team also created another important wetsuit (and, coincidentally, boardshort) ingredient, nylon, within a month of neoprene.
Neoprene is an ideal candidate for wetsuits. It’s flexible, durable, a good insulator, and can tolerate a wide variety of physical conditions. Problems with the assembly of wetsuits have led to several innovations. Originally, the holes that were used for the thread went all the way through both layers of neoprene allowing cold water to flow through the holes, into the wetsuit, and directly to the skin. Using a tape that sealed the holes and stopped water from flowing through the neoprene resolved the problem and resulted in better insulation. Later, advances such as gluing seams together and blind stitching (where a curved needle penetrates only one side of the wetsuit) flooded the market and are still used in a large portion of the wetsuits available today.
 “With a glued seam, we have a water tight seal, but the seam tends to break down very fast. With a stitched seam, water easily enters the garment…[the blind stitch] increases the strength of the glued construction without sacrificing the watertight seal,” Bruce Moore of Hurley wetsuits explained.
Since the creation of the blind stitch process, wetsuit makers have been able to focus their attentions on the other facets of the wetsuit and have integrated any new materials or processes into seam technology.
O’Neill’s senior wetsuit designer, Eli Marmar, thinks that the most important seam-based innovation has been the use of the fluid seam weld, which incorporates a stretchy silicon-based urethane and replaces the inflexible heat pressed nylon tape that was previously used.
 “Now seam technology has caught up with material stretch. So you have positive mobility with warmth,” Matuse’s Matt Larson and John Campbell added.
On the general materials front, most insiders in the wetsuit manufacturing race agree that the superstretch material that came out of Japan about 10 years ago was the most important recent innovation to wetsuits.
“Super-stretch has allowed designers to develop numerous closures never possible with traditional neoprenes,” Moore said. “[And it] has been instrumental to better fit and reduced paddling restriction.”
Closures are another important feature of a wetsuit. The standard zipper tends to allow some water to get through and also reduces the flexibility of the wetsuit. The upside to having a huge zipper running down the back of a wetsuit is that it allows for ease of entry. But just as in any problematic feature of the wetsuit, the best solution incorporates flexibility, a watertight seal, and accessibility.
In today’s wetsuits the buyer will find a wide array of entry point systems. There are front zips, short and long back zips, and a few that allow for zipperless closures utilizing elastic cords or Velcro. The advances in neoprene quality over the years assure that even the base model wetsuits of today surpass the top of the line wetsuits of the past.
An important distinction being made in today’s market is the incorporation of environmentally conscious products to the historically petroleum based wetsuit market. Brands such as Patagonia, Matuse, Body Glove, and others are offering products that use non-petroleum based rubber.
“Limestone based rubber is now just as stretchy but 40 percent warmer,” Larson and Campbell of Matuse said.
    Aside from incorporating new kinds of neoprene, Rip Curl is one of the companies that looks for warmth through the use of batteries in their H-bomb. It is one way that companies have devised to get thinner suits warmer.
    Others in the industry question the ability of the highly technological H-bomb to grab the interest of a surfer consumer base that has traditionally been driven towards simplicity and away from add-ons. But maybe today’s surfers, who have shown a willingness to buy quad-fins and boards with hyperbolic stringers, are ready to deal with necessities such as having to charge their wetsuit overnight.
    It’s a positive sign for the future because companies are thinking out of the box. And as long as there is a suit out there that can be thin, flexible, and warm, then the market will be continually driven to invent better suits. And thus, the future of wetsuit design relies heavily on innovations and development of materials used for wetsuits.
    Moore of Hurley is banking on “smart fabrics, fabrics with triggers that react to various environments” as being the next big breakthrough in materials. And he believes that, “wetsuits are in an analog age with digital on the horizon.”
    Marmar of O’Neill thinks there will be replicas of neoprene with a foam or gel core that allow for 1mm wetsuits that are as warm as the 3mm ones of today. And other kingpins of the wetsuit world echo similar thoughts about tomorrow’s wetsuits being much improved in all categories.
    The materials may exist now, but the consumer really won’t find out about them until the companies that have rights to the materials find a way to make suits that are reasonably priced and durable. So be prepared to see some interesting developments over the next five years that allow for a surf experience very unlike that of today. And also remember that your purchases influence the direction that wetsuits of the future take. Choose which element of the wetsuit you would most like to see progress and buy the brand and model that is excelling in that category.
    Barring any major setbacks in wetsuit technology, Moore will be proven correct in his prediction that, “the wetsuit of tomorrow will be thin, light, non-restrictive, and incredibly warm.”