“World’s most beautiful” surfboard shaper stuns with pivot to unisex high-fashion backed by prestigious London-based retailer; includes essential $300 surf trunks!

“We’re pairing a hero board with each of the clothing collections, and for the first season, we’ve got a board with a thermo-chromatic paint that runs from black to transparent."

Many years ago, I wrote a story called The Most Beautiful Shaper in the World.

I commented, “He is still the most fantastic looking man I have ever seen and what sleepless nights he caused me!”

Back then, there was no delicacy to his exceptionally virile merchandise. He was as blood ripe as they come.

The women, including my girlfriend, maybe my girlfriend most of all, had to be treated for spells of dizziness. Worse, his surfboards were addictive and try as I did, I couldn’t be indifferent to his skills

These days, however, the crown of Most Beautiful Shaper in the World, held for thirty years in Coolangatta, Queensland, now resides on Sydney’s northern beaches. 

Hayden Cox, who is forty, and married to the marketing whiz Danielle Cox, née Foote, has rolled his biz HaydenShapes into one of the most popular surfboard brands in the world.

His Hypto-Krypto model, a spruced-up seventies style design that was more fun that the vigorous operation of your sex glands, is still one of the best selling surfboards of all time. 

Now, and following collaborations with Audi and IWC, Cox has partnered up with online men’s retailer Mr Porter for his eponymous surfboard brand’s debut clothing collection, which is called Acetone, and not to be confused with the magazine by Andrew Kidman and Sam Rhodes, which was designed to offset the WSL’s “utter bastardisation” of their beloved sport.

“I’ve always had an interest in fashion from afar, and I’ve been somewhat intrigued about it as an extension of the brand,” Cox told GQ of the thirty-five piece unisex collection. “I could see it being a part of the whole Haydenshapes story that sits in my head.”

Hats cost around one hundred pounds, trunks around two hundred pounds, while the Template Coach Logo-Appliequéd Crinkled-Shell Jackets hits three hundred. 

Examine collection here.