New Age Swimwear: One Swimsuit, 96 Ways, For Your Every Occasion

The best swimwear shouldn't tell women how they're supposed to feel. It should give them the freedom to decide for themselves. 

When most people think about innovation in fashion, they picture the next trend: a new silhouette, a bold print, or the latest seasonal collection. But I believe the most meaningful innovation doesn't come from the style alone. It comes from solving problems people have quietly accepted for years.

Swimwear is notoriously hated amongst a large subset of women who haven’t felt like they’ve found a bathing suit that works for them. Before I even had a product, I simply asked women over TikTok what they hated about the current swimwear on the market, and 400 women filled out a Google Form questionnaire from that one video. And it was not a short form.

For decades, we've accepted the idea that one swimsuit can't give us everything. We buy one for swimming laps, another for lounging by the pool, another for family vacations, another for romantic getaways, and so on. Somewhere along the way, owning multiple swimsuits became the norm rather than the exception.

But as I’ve grown up, I’ve accepted this less and less. I started to ask “Why?”

Why does one piece of clothing only serve one purpose when our lives are anything but one-dimensional?

Women are multi-faceted. We move between different priorities and lifestyles: work, family, travel, exercise, moments of rest, and so many more. Our schedules change. Our situations change. Our confidence changes. Yet swimwear has remained surprisingly rigid, designed for one occasion, one aesthetic, or one version of ourselves. And don’t even get me started on the countless marketing campaigns telling us how to hide, distract, or contort our bodies in some way that’s supposed to make us feel better in a bathing suit.

I believe it's time for that to change. The future of swimwear isn't about asking women to fit into a swimsuit. It's about designing swimwear that fits into women's lives. That belief became the foundation of Haven Nova Swim.

Questioning the Current Market

Haven Nova Swim wasn't born because I wanted to start a swimwear company. Heck, if you had told 13-year-old me I’d be starting a bathing suit company, I would have run for the hills. My founder story started during one of the most challenging seasons of my life.

At 25 years old, I suffered an intense back injury that changed how my life looked overnight, as I could not walk and had to use a walker. After a few months, I started physical therapy to relearn how to walk independently and then regain confidence in my body. Then, the next step was swimming to regain strength in my legs. Being in the water is a very familiar feeling as I was a competitive swimmer from ages 5 to 13 and a competitive rower from ages 15 to 22.

But every trip to the pool reminded me of a frustrating reality I’ve felt my whole life while growing up on Jersey beaches: that no bathing suit could make me feel my best while doing it all. I needed a different swimsuit for all the situations I’d find myself in. One activity required support, another required comfort, another required more coverage, and so on.

So during those countless laps when I needed to get my mind off of the pain and onto something future-looking, I started thinking, “What would it look like to have a bathing suit that fit my every need?”

Designing for Real Life

Too often, fashion is designed around occasions instead of people. Each one serves a purpose, but very few are designed around the reality that most women don't experience life in neatly separated categories.

A day at the beach rarely stays one thing. You might start with a morning swim, spend the afternoon reading in the sun, join friends for a volleyball game, grab lunch at a beachside restaurant, and end the evening collecting shells during sunset. Why should that require multiple swimsuits, coverups, holding swimsuits in place, or constantly shifting them when they’re out of place?

Instead of designing a swimsuit for a single use, I designed one that could adapt. Through our patent-pending design, our swimsuit can be worn in 96 different ways, allowing women to adjust coverage, support, and style based on what feels right for them at that very moment.

It's about having one swimsuit that evolves with you. And that’s where I think the evolution of fashion is going. How can we make fashion adapt to our lives, preferences, and situations, rather than the other way around?

Confidence Looks Different at Every Moment

One of the core philosophies behind Haven Nova Swim is a simple phrase:

For everybody and every body.

It's easy to say those words, but I believe they should influence how products are designed, not just how they're marketed. Every body tells a different story. Some bodies are healing. Some have changed after pregnancy. Some have changed through aging. Some are learning to love themselves after years of comparison. Some simply want to enjoy a day at the beach without worrying about whether they'll feel comfortable standing up from their towel.

Confidence doesn't look the same for everyone, and it doesn't even look the same for the same person every day. Some days, confidence means wearing less. Other days, it means wanting more coverage. Neither choice is more empowering than the other. The empowering part is having the choice. I think that’s really why versatility matters. Not forcing women into one idea of confidence, but giving them the freedom to decide what confidence looks like for themselves.

Rethinking Value

The conversation around fashion has changed dramatically over the last decade, and I LOVE it. Consumers are asking better questions. Where was this made? How long will it last? Is it worth the investment? Am I supporting a small business? What am I spending my hard-earned money on?

Those questions have encouraged brands to think differently, and this is where I think the fashion brands that are intentional can really shine. It’s easy to think economic fashion is just about the sticker price, but I disagree with that.

I think it's about creating more value from a single purchase. It’s about lifting the emotional weight of having to think through what to wear or pack for vacations. It means buying fewer pieces over time. It means investing in quality rather than quantity. It means understanding the impact of the item not just for you, but the greater community in which we live. Sustainability has become one of the defining conversations in fashion, and rightly so.

Many brands are thinking carefully about responsible production, ethical manufacturing, and material choices. But sustainability isn't only about what and how something is made. It's also about how long people continue using it. The products with the greatest longevity are often the ones that create the least waste over time because they reduce the need for constant replacement.

It’s why I think the rise in multiwear fashion is here. Just look at Pashion Footwear or Free People’s Convertible Collection. These products adapt to different moments, different occasions, and different seasons of life, naturally becoming something someone reaches for again and again. That's a quieter form of sustainability, but I think it's equally as impactful.

Innovation With Intention

My background in marketing has taught me that successful products don't simply solve functional problems; they solve emotional ones.

People rarely remember products because of their features alone. They remember how those products made them feel. The goal was never to create a swimsuit with 96 ways to wear it simply because the number makes people’s ears perk up.

The goal was to create a product that removes friction from my life, and now our lives. There’s already enough to be thinking about when we’re in such a vulnerable piece of apparel like swimwear; the design limitations don’t need to be one of those.

The feeling that you packed the wrong swimsuit; the panic of throwing in multiple bathing suits because you don’t know how you’ll feel that day or what other people will be wearing; the hesitation about joining a spontaneous game on the beach; the belief that your swimsuit has to dictate what you can or can't do that day. Those moments may seem small individually, but together they shape how we experience confidence. And confidence isn't something a piece of clothing gives us. It comes from feeling comfortable enough to fully participate in our lives.

If thoughtful design can help create more of those moments, then that's the kind of innovation worth pursuing.

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Photos courtesy of and written by Mariah Parsons

Models: Haven Nova Models