311 South Bay Board Shorts
final sale
In 1961, with a surf scene just gaining steam in Southern California, Carrie Birdwell Mann sewed the first pairs of “Birdies” for her sons. Hoping to replace the canvas shorts popular with surfers at the time with something more functional, she found inspiration in the sails of the boats docked at nearby Newport Beach. Originally working with off-the-shelf spinnaker cloth, she soon commissioned Birdwell’s signature nylon fabric, SurfNyl™️, and replicated the two-layer construction and triple seams of the most durable sails.
Since then we’ve gone on to make quite a bit more, but we’re still doing just that – handmaking the highest quality board shorts right here in Southern California. They’ve been carefully refined over the years, but the design has stood the tests of time and surf and sun remarkably well. Each pair of our 311 board shorts is hand-cut from our proprietary SurfNyl™️ and sewn by expert craftspeople in Santa Ana, California, and guaranteed for life. These limited edition 311s come in either Navy or Paprika, with horizontal “South Bay” stripes inspired by archival designs.