Palm Swimwear

Palm Swimwear, which trades as Palm Swim + Resort, is a small Australian swimwear and resort label with Kat Furey as creative director, a Melbourne base and a sewing studio in Bali, Indonesia. Every swim piece is made in that studio, either to order or in limited runs, mostly from ECONYL regenerated nylon. The brand has not published its founding year or a full company history, so this entry sticks to what the label itself states and what can be read from its fabrics.

Made one at a time in Bali

The production model is the most distinctive thing about Palm. The label says all of its swim pieces are produced in-house in its Bali studio and are "made singularly upon purchase," with the rest of the range made in limited numbers. That is close to the opposite of how most swimwear is made. A conventional swim brand commits to a run of several hundred pieces per style and color, ships them to a warehouse and discounts what is left at the end of summer. Palm makes the garment after the order arrives.

The trade-off is time and price. Made-to-order swimwear takes longer to reach the customer and costs more per piece, because there is no bulk run to spread the cutting and setup over. In return there is little dead stock, and a small label can offer more styles than its inventory budget would otherwise allow.

The company backs the work with a lifetime warranty on all of its handmade pieces, a promise rarely made in swimwear, where chlorine, salt and sunscreen wear out elastane faster than almost anything else in a wardrobe.

Australian base, Indonesian studio

The website opens with an acknowledgment of the Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung people, the traditional owners of the land around Melbourne, which places the business side of the label in that city. Making happens in Bali. The pairing is common among Australian swim and resort brands, which use the island's sewing workshops and its proximity to Australia, but it is less common to own the studio rather than contract a factory.

Palm's giving program also splits between the two countries. The label donates 2 percent of every sale to the Australian Marine Conservation Society and plants one mangrove with every order, as part of a restoration project in East Java, Indonesia.

The fabric list

Palm publishes a fabric page that is more detailed than most labels of its size bother with. The core swim fabric is ECONYL, the regenerated nylon made by the Italian company Aquafil from waste that includes old fishing nets, fabric scraps and industrial plastic. Palm repeats Aquafil's claims for the yarn: a carbon footprint about 75 percent lower than virgin nylon and up to 90 percent less water.

Beyond swim, the resort pieces use a wider mix:

• Silk satin for slip dresses and separates, described as eco silk.
• TENCEL, the Austrian wood-pulp fiber made by Lenzing in a closed-loop process.
• Bamboo and organic cotton for lighter cover-ups.
• Recycled polyester jersey from the Italian mill Ecoantex, spun from plastic bottles.
• Deadstock bought from Australian and New Zealand drapers, which the label admits comes with little supply-chain traceability.

That last point is a candid note to include. Deadstock is often marketed as the greenest choice in fashion, but it usually arrives without paperwork, and certifications are rarely possible.

What Palm makes

The range covers bikini tops and bottoms, one-piece swimsuits, sets, dresses and accessories, sold under the swim and resort labels together. The label does not publish a style-by-style catalog history, but its bikini tops sit in the same family as the triangle bra and other soft, wire-free cuts that hand sewing in a small studio suits best.

Palm sits in a crowded Australian field. Larger labels such as Monday Swimwear and Kulani Kinis sell to the same beach-and-resort customer at much greater volume, with stock held in warehouses. Palm's position is the slower one: fewer pieces, each sewn after it is bought, by people the brand employs.

What is not on record

The founding year, the name of any founder beyond Furey's creative-director title, the size of the Bali studio and the company's turnover are not stated on the brand's site, and no Wikipedia entry or trade-press profile was found. The label's own pages are the only primary source. Until that changes, the clearest facts about Palm are its fabrics, its studio and its made-to-order rule, which say more about the business than a founding date would.

Last updated October 7, 2026