Why Sustainable Swimwear Costs More...
... and what you're actually paying for?
by the Wai-Lā Team
There’s no point pretending the price difference isn’t real. A sustainable swimsuit costs more than a fast fashion one, often significantly more. If you’re going to spend that money, you deserve a straight answer on where it goes.
The fabric itself costs more
Conventional swimwear is made from virgin nylon or polyester — cheap petroleum-based synthetics that are inexpensive to produce at scale. Recycled alternatives like ECONYL® regenerated nylon cost more to manufacture because the process of collecting, processing, and regenerating waste material into usable yarn is more involved than simply producing new fibre from oil.
The performance standards are also higher. ECONYL® fabric is tested for chlorine resistance, UV protection, stretch recovery and durability — properties that matter for swimwear but that cheap fabric simply doesn’t need to meet because it isn’t built to last more than a season.
Smaller production runs
Fast fashion works on volume. The more units a manufacturer produces, the lower the cost per piece. A brand producing 50,000 identical bikinis gets a dramatically different price per unit than a small independent brand producing a few hundred.
Sustainable brands almost always produce in smaller quantities — deliberately, because overproduction is one of the fashion industry’s biggest waste problems. That restraint is the right call environmentally, but it does mean the cost per piece stays higher. There’s no clever way around that.
People are paid fairly
The cheapest swimwear in the world is cheap partly because the people who made it weren’t paid much. Fast fashion's ability to sell a swimsuit for £15 depends on keeping labour costs as low as possible, which usually means production in countries with minimal wage protections and poor working conditions.
Ethical production costs more. Fair wages, safe factories, and proper oversight all add to the price of the finished garment. That’s not a premium — it’s just what things cost when the people making them are treated decently.
The construction is more considered
A well-made swimsuit requires precise pattern-cutting, double-lined panels where needed, proper seaming, and fit testing. It’s not complicated work, but it takes time and skill to do correctly. Mass-produced swimwear skips steps wherever possible. That’s why cheap swimsuits often lose their shape after a few wears, go see-through when wet, or have straps that dig or seams that roll.
Better construction isn’t just about how a piece looks. It’s what determines whether it lasts two seasons or ten.
The cost-per-wear maths
A £15 swimsuit that lasts one summer works out at £15 for roughly 20 wears — about 75p per wear. A £145 swimsuit that holds its shape across four seasons, worn roughly the same amount of times each year, works out at around 45p per wear. The cheaper option isn’t actually cheaper.
That’s before accounting for the environmental cost of the first one ending up in landfill and the second one not. Conventional swimwear fabric doesn’t biodegrade — it fragments into microplastics. Every cheap suit that gets binned after a season is adding to that problem in a way that a well-made suit used for years simply doesn’t.
What this means for Wai-Lā
We’re a small brand. We don’t have the pro6duction volumes that would let us compete on price with fast fashion, and we’re not trying to. What we can offer is swimwear made from fabric that was worth making, built to last, and priced to reflect what it actually costs to produce it honestly.
That’s the deal. We think it’s a fair one.
Explore our swimwear collection at wailaswimwear.com — pieces designed for the coast, made with care for what lies beneath it.
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