Bydee

Bydee is an Australian swimwear and resort wear label founded in Sydney in 2013 by designer Dessy Hairis, known as Dee, who built it from a market stall into an internationally sold brand. Its name reads simply as "by Dee". The company sells bikinis, one-pieces, resort clothes and jewelry from its website and a store in the Sydney suburb of Rosebery.

Bydee's market stall beginnings

Hairis learned to sew as a teenager from her mother, and the brand grew directly out of that skill. In its early years Bydee sold from a market stall, where Hairis would hand-stitch customers into pieces on the spot. The company presents those fittings as the start of its design method: every adjustment made on a real customer at a trestle table fed back into the next pattern.

That origin is worth noting because it is the opposite of how many swim labels of the 2010s began. Plenty started as a brand idea, an Instagram account and a contract factory. Bydee started with a sewing machine and direct, physical feedback, and only later scaled up into an online business with a shop.

Sydney swimwear and the Mediterranean thread

Australia has one of the deepest swimwear trades in the world, with Sydney and the beach culture around it producing labels that sell globally. Bydee belongs to that scene but draws its look from somewhere else. The company says its designs come from Hairis's Mediterranean roots and her travel, and each collection is pitched as an escape to a particular dream destination.

The result is resort swimwear rather than surf swimwear. The pieces are designed to move from beach to bar, in the brand's phrase, and the customer it describes is "quietly confident, sexy and detail-driven", someone who builds her wardrobe with care and wears the same piece in more than one setting.

What the range covers

Swimwear is the core: bikini tops, bikini bottoms and one-piece swimsuits. In this archive's terms the tops include triangle bra and bralette shapes, and the bottoms range from the classic bikini bottom to cheekier cuts. Around the swim sits a resort wear line of dresses, tops, bralettes, skirts and sarongs, so a suit can be bought with the cover-up meant to go over it.

The brand also sells jewelry, including earrings, necklaces, bracelets and waist chains, and accessories such as scarves, tote bags and scrunchies. Waist chains are a telling detail. They exist to be worn over swimwear and bare skin, which says a lot about how Bydee pictures its customer's summer.

Designing for detail

Bydee's own description of its work keeps returning to detail: each piece, it says, is meant to feel like the wearer's own work of art. In swimwear that usually means hardware, ties, cutouts, ruching and print, the small things that separate a resort piece from a plain athletic suit. The company does not publish fabric compositions or factory locations on its about page, so this entry cannot say what the suits are made of or where they are sewn.

From market to international label

The brand's growth from a single stall to international sales took roughly a decade. Its website has moved from the bydee.com.au address to bydeeaus.com, which now handles its online store, and the Rosebery shop gives it a physical base in Sydney's inner south. That combination, a destination store plus a global webshop, is the standard shape for a successful independent Australian swim label.

Where Bydee sits in this archive

Bydee is a swimwear house, not a lingerie maker, but the boundary between the two is thin. Bikini tops share their construction with soft bras, and the bralettes in its resort range blur the line further. The archive holds 29 Bydee products, mostly swim pieces, which together give a fair picture of a label that grew from hand-fitting customers at a market into a recognizable Sydney name, still run by the woman whose nickname it carries.

Last updated October 7, 2026