About Us
Where this started
My parents came from Colombia. I grew up here, in the U.S., but every summer they put me on a plane and sent me to the coast, to my grandparents, and that was the part of the year I actually waited for. Not because the water was warmer there. Because at that age, being in the water all day was simply what you did, and it never occurred to me to organize a summer around hiding a stomach or a thigh, or to think about my body at all.
Ir al sol means toward the sun. That's the name, and it's also roughly what I did every June: got on a plane and went toward it. I didn't sit down one day and decide a brand needed a name built out of those summers. It just turned out, once I had a brand, that there wasn't another name it could honestly have.
It stopped fitting
I started making swimwear because the swimwear I could buy stopped fitting me, and I don't mean that as the opening line of some transformation story. My body changed the way bodies change over years, not overnight, and the tag kept insisting on the same number it always had. The number on the tag didn't move. Where I carried it did.
Ask a room of women who've bought a matched set in the last few years whether they actually liked how it fit, and watch what happens before anyone answers: someone laughs. That laugh is the whole problem, condensed. I'd buy a size that worked on top and it gaped at my waist, or I'd size up for my hips and bring a loose, sliding top along for the ride. Eventually I stopped assuming the fix was mine to make and started making the suits myself.
One number can't do four jobs
A swimsuit size is a single number standing in for four different measurements: rib cage, bust, waist, hip. On some bodies those four line up closely enough that one number covers all of them well enough. On plenty of us they don't, and when they don't, the suit has to pick which measurement it's going to honor and let the rest be approximately right. That is not a body failing a garment. It is a garment failing arithmetic.
So I built the Design Studio around your actual numbers instead of an average of them. It's about four minutes on your phone. You answer a few questions about how you're built and what you like, coverage, cut, that sort of thing, and it draws the suit as you go, so you're looking at your version of it before anything gets cut. It's free, nothing is ordered until you decide to order it, and nobody is going to chase you afterward if you don't.
Two sizes, not one
Every suit I make is cut in two sizes, your top size and your bottom size, and yes, they're allowed to be different numbers, because on most women they are. There's no upcharge for it and no separates rack to dig through looking for a lucky match. You give me both numbers and I cut to both, at no extra cost, which shouldn't be a remarkable thing to offer but apparently is.
Coverage works the same way. How much you want to show on a given day is a preference, not something you settle for because the pattern only comes cut one way. You pick the cut, a classic brief or a side tie, high-waisted or high-thigh, and the suit gets built around your choice instead of around mine.
One of one
Nothing exists until you order it. I choose the fabrics for each drop myself, and you choose yours from what's actually in that drop, not from whatever's left over on a rack. Once you order, your piece is designed and then cut and sewn by the workshop in Florida, and it takes four to six weeks to reach your door, because it wasn't sitting in a warehouse waiting for you. It was made after you asked for it.
One fabric. One shape. Once. I never cut the same fabric in the same shape twice, so once a print and a cut have been paired and sewn, that pairing doesn't happen again. Nobody else will have yours. Most pieces are also reversible, finished on both faces with no lining, so you get a print on one side and a plain color on the other, and which one faces out on any given day is entirely up to you.
You shouldn't have to choose which half of you fits
Evelin