More Bondi than Amalfi, Australian resort wear label Double Rainbouu blurs the lines

Double Rainbouu, a label established in Sydney in 2016 by Mikey Nolan and Toby Jones, is not your typical resort wear brand. Designed for “beach babes and pool punks”, as the brand’s website puts it, the Hawaiian shirts, swim shorts and towelling robes that make up the bulk of its offerings do not evoke glamorous locations such as the French Riviera, the Hamptons or the Amalfi Coast. Instead, they call forth the shabby-chic vibe of ocean-side enclaves such as Venice in Los Angeles or Bondi Beach in Sydney.

Nolan and Jones, who both have backgrounds in visual communication and print design, met while working at surfwear brand Insight and then went on to work together at Tsubi, the legendary denim brand.

“We left Tsubi and we were burned out by the fashion industry, so we did a couple of things that didn’t work out – but it was a good experience even though it didn’t feel good at the time,” says Nolan when we meet him at the label’s headquarters in Surry Hills, Sydney, the day after Double Rainbouu’s Resort 2020 show at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia (MBFWA).

“We decided we wanted to work together on something simple because we had worked on too many projects where there had been too many chefs in the kitchen. So we thought, ‘Let’s do something that plays to our strengths,’ which is print design, marketing and brand building. We felt that beachwear coming from Australia made sense.”

The line started with only a handful of shirts in five prints. After launching online, it quickly built a thriving wholesale business, which now includes top department stores such as Opening Ceremony and Barneys in the US, Lane Crawford and Joyce in Hong Kong and China, and online retailers such as Net-a-Porter and Ssense. The duo develop all the prints in-house, some of them digitally and some of them by hand. They started the brand as a menswear company, but the women’s business has been growing steadily.

“As Australians, we have a different approach to beachwear,” Nolan says. “Our summers are long here so you dress for the beach almost every day. You always dress factoring in the chance of a swim, because you can swim from September till March, while a European beach brand is normally only for that holiday or when you’re lying by the pool. When we design a pair of swim shorts, you can wear them all day, so it’s a more versatile approach to beachwear.”

The label’s Resort 2020 presentation, held in the idyllic surrounds of the Chinese Garden of Friendship in the heart of Sydney, was one of the most talked-about events of MBFWA. The collection’s macramé accents, tiger prints and Asian motifs hark back to the hippie trail of the ’60s and ’70s, which took the flower children from Europe across the Middle East to Asia, with a number of them eventually ending up in Australia.

“We wanted to be somewhere in nature and by the water, but not something obvious like Bondi or the harbour as we wanted to highlight the cultural side of Sydney,” says Nolan about the location of the well-received event.

“We did a bit of a brainstorm and came up with the Chinese Garden. I hadn’t been there for 10 years myself and we both fell in love with it. Toby is actually really into gardening and we always admired how Chinese gardens represent a microcosm of nature without trying to bend nature to fit the human idea of it, but just represent it the way it is in a micro sense. Everything is balanced and in harmony in Chinese gardens. It really made sense from a show perspective.”

The label’s success is due in no small part to the rise of streetwear and athleisure wear that in the last five years has had a significant impact on the fashion industry – and shows no signs of slowing down. Add to that its very reasonable prices and you have a winning formula that caters to the way young people like to dress today, where the lines between high and low are becoming more blurred.

“We always wanted to be a beachwear brand but one that is more dabbling in what’s happening in fashion. We also wanted to be more at the low end in terms of price,” Nolan says.

He adds that the company is planning its first foray into retail with a store in Bondi, where it has already experimented with pop-up shops on the area’s hip Gould Street.