Deep Dive: The One Boardshort That Ruled Them All

This story was commissioned in partnership with Hurley 

“What is a boardshort?”

It’s a good question. 

And if anyone’s qualified to answer it, it’s the man over the phone in Costa Mesa, California, who posed it in the first place.

Scott Madison has been designing and working with “boardshorts” since 1990. At Billabong (under Bob Hurley), then at Hurley (under Bob Hurley), then briefly under his own label Atwater (which won SIMA brand of the year in 2009, no less) then to Nike, then back once again to Hurley. 

Considering Scott’s breadth and depth of knowledge on the topic, I asked him to break down the eras of surf-specific shorts to see if we could locate their tipping points from bad, to passable, to good, to otherworldy good.

Turns out, it all centers around the Hurley Phantoms.

“You Never Find the Phantom, He Finds You”

2002: Nike acquires Hurley for a reported $95 million. The idea of a premium product called ‘Phantom’ was already knocking around the office, driven by Hurley marketing guru Paul Gomez, who wanted to make ‘Phantom’ an innovation platform that would form a franchise within the company. 

“The first Phantom was non-stretch, but we used bonding — which was great,” Scott says of the early R&D. “But the seams blew out and it kind of fizzled.”

And then came a fateful trip to Nike HQ, in Beaverton, Oregon, where the freshly-minted Hurley gang were given the run of Nike’s deep, tech-heavy archives. 

“Bruce Moore, Carson Wach, and Ryan Hurley found a material that was meant for a European Olympic swim team,” Scott explains. “Rob Machado was always asking for something, ‘lighter, faster and similar to a second skin’, and this stuff was super stretchy and super light.”

Lightbulb. 

After a few trial runs, the major issue became how to stop this Mithril from stretching out and never coming back? Answer: non-stretch material in the waistband, and a “stretch cover stitch on the hem + three-needle stitching with the overstitch on the seams.” 

Shortly thereafter, the first proper Phantom arrived in the office.

“Everyone started yanking on them, they started going around the office, like, ‘Are these for real, can you wear these?’” said the Chicago-born star of Endless Summer II turned long-term Hurley employee (now CEO at Florence), Pat O’Connell. “Let’s get Rob in here because he’ll probably have a better idea than me.”

Rob came, and Rob liked. 

“You go from wearing a traditional boardshort, to something that makes you feel naked,” he said at the time. “This is going to change…everything.”

He wasn’t wrong.

We have liftoff

“Those things were flying off that rack at like $150 or something!?” says the 2x US Open champ and current Hurley North America marketing guru Brett Simpson, who was a team rider at the time. “I couldn’t believe it. It was crazy in a way to think that people were paying 150 bucks for a pair of boardshorts.”

Scott’s quick to point out that the Phantom phenomenon was the result of a whole smattering of talented folk working toward a common purpose over a long period of time. “It’s like a puzzle,” he says. Scott points to the Phantom Hyperweave as being one of the strongest pieces of the period, which was driven by Hurley’s VP of Innovation at the time, Bruce Moore. 

“Hyperweave, originally was this really neat, woven shoe,” Scott says, which Bruce and the gang managed to work into the ever-troublesome waistband of their newest Phantoms.

“The tunnels and the power cords in the waist would let you move enough, but it wouldn’t restrict you,” Scott says. “When compressing on a bottom turn they would turn with your body, they wouldn’t restrict you, but they would lock you down at the same time. The weave pattern was really neat too, and it just looked totally different to anything anyone had ever done.”

Scott’s full of interesting anecdotes from what was undoubtedly a fun and productive period. None so better than the story of the velcro-less fly, that was designed, and patented, by Scott’s design mentor, the late Lian Murray.

“She was a really good designer,” Scott explains, “And she was fed up with the velcro on her husband’s boardshorts catching and ruining all her lingerie in the dryer.”

Lian put her smarts into designing the velcro-less fly that’s still common on tech-forward trunks throughout the industry.

“It was such an amazing idea that she ended up patenting it, and then everyone knocked us off,” Scott says, laughing again, before adding: “But Bob Hurley was such a nice guy that he didn’t go after anyone.”

To this day, most high-level boardshorts now live velcro-free.

Modern day: Kai Lenny re-engineers The Phantom

If you had to chose an athlete to represent Phantom then it would be Kai Lenny. And not so coincidently, he’s on the team. And Scott tells me he’s the best athlete in terms of R&D he’s ever worked with. 

“He’s taken our pieces to another level testing them,” Scott says, before going into detail about how they developed the Phantom Blockade Paddle Series trunks — long name, great looking, and performing (ask Kai).

“Kai wanted somewhere to put his cellphone and keys when he was stand-up paddling without the pocket bags moving around,” Scott explains, before explaining the intense back and forth process. Which, concluded with Scott, face to face with Kai after a surf at V-Land, pitching him the idea. Under due pressure from management (“He’d better like this idea Scott!”)

“We wanted specific areas of mobility and durability, so in the front, back and the waistband I used the new Phantom+ fabric,” Scott says, repeating the pitch. “On the side panels I used our stretchiest Phantom fabric, then added some breathability with Phantom mesh in the back yoke area, because you get sweaty stand up paddling.”

Essentially, Scott added all the extra features he could think of, without being gimmicky – “I even added somewhere to loop your shirt/bottle on” – and Kai loved it. The relationship between athlete and designer developing from there and heavily informing Hurley’s boardshort offering’s since; Scott often makes one-offs ideas just for Kai, sending them to Maui and getting instant feedback.

“Normally you give people a sample and they like everything,” Scott says. “But Kai’s super specific — “I don’t like this, I don’t like that,” — that type of feedback is so helpful.”

You might expect a grizzled design head like Scott to to be swigging nostalgia and reminiscing about the good old days, but it’s the new stuff that he’s the most buzzed on. Spring ’25 and Spring ’26, particularly. In part, because he’s had an idea that’s been knocking around his Adobe files since 2012, validated by the foremost waterman in the world.

“When I was at Nike I was developing this boardshort that was totally futuristic, and when it came over I showed the guys in Innovation at Hurley and they were just like, ‘Meh’.” Scott explains. 

Scott dusted the idea off two years ago, and when Kai liked it (the only thing he was worried about was the flat drawcord, which Scott laughs and says was the “least of his worries!”) – Scott went all in.

“The feedback was, ‘If we’re not going to stand for Phantom and innovation then we shouldn’t be doing this. So I was like, ‘Ok!’” says Scott. “So we went for it and we’re launching the Phantom Plus Fuse for Spring ’25. The idea is to minimise the construction and remove anything that isn’t needed.”

The major criticism of Scott’s idea way back was that it “Didn’t look like a boardshort,” but decades of experience – and Kai’s validation – have given him the confidence that he might just be onto something. 

After all wouldn’t be the first time that an initial ‘meh’ turned into a hit. And pushing the limits of what can be achieved in surf trunks is obviously something Scott loves dearly to this day. 

“When you break it down, what makes something a boardshort?” he asks, shortly before signing off. “People are water people now, they surf, they dive, they spearfish, they paddleboard, they do anything involving the water. I think with technology we’ve finally been able to give people what they actually need and what they’re looking for.”