A grown man can get serious beach body envy at this time of year. The physique in the mirror and on the sun lounger does not always compare favourably to the form on social media. Guys flexing their abs and glutes dominate social media, with even older fellas – like the permanently vacationing playboy Gianluca Vacchi, and the gold standard, David Beckham, still magnificent in his tighty-whitey briefs – eliciting a Proustian splash of memories soaked in sun and chlorine.
And now his son Cruz has been spotted in a pair of similarly tiny trunks – a pair of £410 Prada budgie-smugglers.
Twenty summers ago, I took a swimming lesson with the world’s greatest pool boy. Pierre Gruneberg, then a spry 73, was lithe and tanned; a magnificent poster boy for daily aerobic exercise and very good living. He had spent the last 55 years as maître nageur at Club Dauphin, the idyllic Med-side swimming pool at the Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat in the south of France.
Even more impressive than Gruneberg’s pecs was his roster of students. Down the years, he dished out advice on stroke, rhythm and breath to superstars including Picasso, Charlie Chaplin, Ralph Lauren, Liza Minelli, Tina Turner and a suite of presidents, each leaving their egos in the changing rooms to listen to his aquatic wisdom. As Gruneberg told me: “All men are equal when they are wearing nothing but their swimming costumes.”
For “swimming costume”, of course, read “Speedo”. Gruneberg wore Speedos every day of his working life. His male clients, too, were obliged to dress thus. In 1903, a law was passed by the French government stipulating that men must only wear tight-fitting swimming trunks at public pools – the idea being that less material housed less dirt and bacteria and was therefore more hygienic. Egalitarian swimming attire was a great social leveller, just as my pool pal Pierre had noted.
Founded in Sydney in 1914 by the Scottish emigrant Alexander MacRae, the Speedo brand (or, as the French like to call the trunks, “un Speedo”) saw an opportunity and quickly became the default setting and nickname for men’s briefs during summer vacations. These were the days when men aspired to look athletic and competitive during the holidays, all-over-tanning like a pro swimmer. From Mykonos to Marbella, Bridlington to Bournemouth, even the most terminally un-Olympic men wore the ‘Aussie cossie’.
Long before Orlebar Brown and Villebrequin luxed-up swimwear, a boy purchased his trunks from a sporting retailer, and it was Speedo or nothing. (My parents knew families who preferred “nothing”, by the way, but let’s not go there – it’s too triggering.)
In the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, 27 of the 29 gold medalists wore the brand. At the 1972 Olympics, Mark Spitz became the pin-up boy for health, efficiency and homoeroticism thanks to his seven gold medals and iconic stars and stripes Speedos.
Me? I wore them at school; we all did. It wasn’t embarrassing because, just like verucas and watery vending machine hot chocolate, Speedos were an integral part of the public swimming pool experience. It was a bit different squeezing my thirtysomething frame into a pair years later when taking to the water with the buff Pierre Gruneberg.
Would I do that now? With the likes of David Beckham to compete with, and young Cruz following suit? Not. A. Chance. And yet… As the occasionally Speedo-clad James Bond might say: never say never.
With each passing summer, men’s swimming clobber is getting briefer and shorts shorter. Designer poolside collections are currently dominated by Speedo-like swimmers from Gucci, Hermès and Dior. And right now, with another heatwave up on us, a man’s biggest summer flex is not his wristwatch or his girlfriend – it’s his body.
