Malia Mills's "Country Girl" bikini top.

Swimsuit Perfection

For many women, trying on and choosing a bathing suit is still the kind of demoralizing torture-a-thon that starts with insecurity, moves on to self-degradation, and, finally, ends with bold proclamations about the bad florescent lighting or dressing room mirror (“It must be curved!”). It’s a ritual that too often ends in tears.

Mills’s slogan is “Love thy differences.”

Like most humans with multiple X chromosomes, Hawaii-born designer Malia Mills had had personal experience visiting these circles of hell, so when she graduated from Cornell in 1990 with a degree in apparel design, she set out to change the way women shop for swimwear. “I decided I wanted to make bathing suits that fit like lingerie, with each top designed to fit a different bra size and each bottom cut to show off a particular shape,” says Mills, 40. “The idea was to be able to mix and match any top to any bottom in any fabric and in any size so you really walked out with your best possible suit.”

She also decided that swimsuit-buying required some serious hand-holding, and that meant hiring staffers with a commitment to helping customers get just the right fit — service people in the vein of the ladies with tape measures around their necks in the “intimates” sections of high-end department stores.

She launched her first line in 1991. Her slogan? “Love thy differences.”

“She understands you can be bigger on top but still small on the bottom,” says New Yorker Alexis Mezzina, who discovered Mills’s designs at a sample sale a few years ago. “Malia was there helping people pick their suits, and I walked up to her and told her that I was looking for something that would work for me. I had a big chest and wanted a top with support that was still comfortable.” Mills helped her find just the thing — the Sophia top, which has adjustable straps, princess seams, and boning for extra shape and support. “It made such a difference,” says Mezzina. “She even showed me how to crisscross the straps for more support.”

Since not everyone is into a strawberry-daiquiri-pink bikini, Mills sources small amounts of different fabrics each season so every suit is part of a limited edition. However, most of the patterned materials (like this season’s Ines pattern) and the solid ones coordinate, so a bottom you buy one season will most likely look fantastic with a top you’ll buy two summers from now. “You want to choose colors and prints you’d find in your closet already,” Mills says. This will help you look coordinated, not uniform. Mills also sells one-piece suits as well as a line for honeymooning brides. And did we mention the softly lit, cozy dressing rooms in her four New York stores? They’re a far cry from the sterile, swinging-door rooms you’ll find at your average department store.

If you’re buying online, Mills suggests calling one of her stores to have a salesperson give you over-the-phone advice on how to get the best fit . . . because the next time you’re at the beach, there should be only one kind of saltwater on your face.

Posted on July 03, 2006