Question: Are you a high-end neoprene connoisseur or a meat-and-two-veg wetsuit man?

Do you cycle through new suits yearly or try and eke as many seasons out as you can?

There’s never been a better time to be a consumer.

Take wetsuits, for example.

We’re offered unheard of warmth, flexibility, durability. You can buy one mm suits to wear in summer. Dry suits for the Arctic circle.

Everything in between. Hoods, gloves, booties, all en vogue.

There’s multiple entrants in the market pushing the price point down, most notably Need and Project Blank. No logo has become the new logo. Somewhere out in the world, Naomi Klein sheds a single tear.

But there’s never been a better time.

I’ve traditionally had short arms and long pockets when it came to wetsuits. Been on Need since their early days as the price was always right.

Never had any truck with them. Solid. Dependable. If a little stiff.

I moved away from them last season as my desolate grey soul was crying out for some colour (and flexibility). Copped a Zion two mm. Splendid suit. V flexible. Just not warm enough for those windchill days in winter’s depths.

I get cold. Real cold. Water in my neck of the woods rarely drops below sixteen degrees celsius. That’s sixty to my American brothers and sisters.

But add in a proper westerly coming down through the valley and the teeth will chatter. I feels it in my bones as I get older. Yet I still won’t fork out more than, say, four hundred dollars for a suit. Considering I surf maybe four-to-eight times a week it’s a dunderhead move.

I also don’t take care of my suits.

At all.

Wetsuits are something to be left wet in the back of the car. Maybe getting a quick fling over the north facing verandah once or twice a week to dry out the dank. Like surfboards, they’re made to be used. None of this hosing after every session with a tinkle of talcum powder. My time on earth is too limited.

Fuck it.

I picked up a new one a little while back. Project Blank. You might be familiar with them if you’re in Australia. A Need-adjacent, logo-free wetsuit for the everyday battler. Cost me $280, delivered, or two hundred American, for a 3/2 with thermal lining, glued seams etc.

Purchase made purely as a result of social media advertising.

So far it’s doing the job.

Worn for over a month now in a NSW winter that is yet to hit its straps, water temp-wise. The mercury is only now dropping below eighteen, sixty-five or thereabouts.

But still, the suit is warm enough.

Flexibility is as you would expect of a middle-of-the-range suit. Not quite in the “It doesn’t even feel like I’m in a wetsuit” category but still malleable enough to not be a hindrance.

For a furiously intermediate surfer, about all you can ask for.

The seams do their job on that crucial first duckdive. And, most importantly, it still manages to dry for the morning session, if flung over said balcony the afternoon previous.

Do remember to wash it out if you take piss in it, though. I’ve accidentally left it sitting in the car a couple of times overnight and the acrid aroma was akin to a family of tomcats holding an unprotected sex party in my boot.

Peeyew.

A satisfactory if not unremarkable product, overall. A few sustainability points in there, if that matters to you. 

And if it reeks too bad I’ll just buy another.

Fuck it. Never been a better time.

And how about you?

Are you a high-end neoprene connoisseur or a meat and two veg character like myself? Do you cycle through new suits yearly or try and eke as many seasons out as you can?

Are you into sustainable wetsuits?

Yulex?

Do you prance around your home in them, hair all trussed up, whiskers drawn onto your nose with a black texta, and meow like a cat?

What else?