The Critical Slide Society

Last year’s winner. Formerly of Globe and O’Neill, Rama McCabe knows his way around pair of scissors and design table like few others. TCSS’s masters Jim Mitchell and Sam Coombes know talent when it ass-claps ‘em in the face and grabbed Rama not long before this event drew breath in 2012. Now living in Bali, the TCSS short only just made the deadline, the delivery boat a week late.

Stab: What was the idea pool that birthed these trunks?
Rama: To tell you the truth, things have been pretty hectic the past few months with a bunch of travelling along with relocating to Bali so it was a tad last minute. I was literally on my daily Skype with Sam (Coombes, TCSS owner) and freaked out after doing a quick email search for the deadline and realised it had come and gone... eeek! I panicked about the whole thing and was teetering on the idea of pulling the pin. Luckily, we had been working on a super cute new waistband construction after a jaunt in Tokyo a few months back. It combined elements of a fixed and elastic waistband to give you something that is, hopefully, cool looking and somewhat original.

How many hands did they go through and where were they made? After the Skype with Sam, I set about drawing up the trunk. That afternoon I shot it through to both Jimbo (Mitchell, TCSS owner) and Sam to see what they thought. Jim was all good with it but Samuel thought it needed a little more contrast. I reworked it a tad then jumped on my scooter and rode off down the street to our little backyard factory in Canggu. After chatting to Made who heads up the tailoring team, he got to work on a proto in available fabrics to get all the details just perfect. While that was getting done the artwork for the yardage was sent off to the depths of Denpasar for printing and dying. I actually haven’t seen the finished short because I had to race off and see some factories in Shanghai.

Talk me through all the tech details that may not be visible to the untrained eye! I have this newfound love for button-flys so we added that into the mix as it gives it a nice tailored look and feel. All the internal seams are welded to reduce those horrible rashes you get if you’re a full-time surf nazi. Last minute we added in a chain stitch down the drawcord centre for a little extra grip and it kinda just looks pretty. The trunks are super adjustable with the draw cord running the full circumference of the waistband so you can make it fit just right.