Meryll Yan creates a Skinni swimsuit for every woman
A serious bikini aficionado since she was a little girl, Skinni founder Meryll Yan is all too familiar with daunting, practically perfect images that real women have to live up to. “When you see just one ideal of a perfectly glammed-up and airbrushed Barbie against an artificial, super manicured set, it will be really hard to imagine yourself wearing a swimsuit,” she agrees.
She was even more convinced of this after moving to beautiful Dumaguete, away from her successful but frenzied “past lives” as a marketer and magazine editor. “I found peace, but I also found adventure,” she describes. “I saw beauty that I had not seen in my travels outside the Philippines.”
Within less than a month of visiting Dumaguete, she had gone swimming with whale sharks and chased waterfalls in Oslob, snorkeled in Dauin, and tried swinging from a tree vine ala Tarzan’s Jane in Siquijor.
“I thought I knew what adventure was before, but I was quickly disabused of my delusion when my fiancé took me on real adventures,” she laughs. Having experienced that exhilaration, she realized she wanted to give women the best of both worlds in a single swimsuit — something that would look great and at the same time make women feel sexy and comfortable. “And we wanted something to wear ourselves when we finally muster up the courage to jump off the 30-foot cliff in Salagdoong, like in those viral drone videos!” she adds merrily.
But more than just creating a swimwear line, she dreamed of broadcasting something that was inspiring and inclusive to all women, not just those who had spent the first quarter of the year cutting out carbs and doing BBG workouts four times a week.
“As overly romantic as it may sound, by the time Skinni was being seriously developed, I was coming from a place of love,” Meryll shares, explaining why after letting the idea percolate since 2014, she finally felt like it was the right time. “The intentions for Skinni were not at all about market share or about simple capitalism,” she emphasizes. “It was a love letter for women to embrace themselves.” She wanted to empower women by heralding the values she has always admired: beautiful, brave, strong, good and powerful.
Skinni was born to make as many women as possible feel beautiful and comfortable in their own skin, and that starts with swimwear: really, really good swimwear. No typical cuts here that you can find in every other store. The pieces are uniquely designed to serve a specific function and enhance form, but also happen to have a dreamy story and significant meanings behind them, all inspired by the life aquatic in the Philippines.
The design for Skinni’s bikinis started with a simple, primary challenge: what cut could secure your chest through crashing waves or tumbling waterfalls? Her fiancé Ramon del Prado, a brilliant artist and 3D animator, helped her translate her initial sketches and ideas (“Kindergarten scrawls in my notebook,” she chuckles) into proper technical drawings, and the results are four bikinis with beautifully distinct and effective cuts, inspired by the letters X and Y (after all, Meryll’s long-time profession and passion is in writing). The X style features a wrap-around top that functionally hugs you twice around the chest. Not only do the tatas feel secure, the style encourages cleavage very nicely, whether you’re well-endowed or not. On the other hand, the Y style features a front strap that holds up your triangle bikini pieces together, making for a very secure hold and a flattering highlight, not to mention really sexy tanline. Bottoms are also reversible, seamless (a dream come true, as most women often forget the importance of a proper-fitting bikini bottom), and of course, so sexy. The one-piece suits, on the other hand, skim the body and have strategic opacity. Most one-piece suits were created to hide everything, but Skinni’s show off sexy details and a flattering silhouette for any woman.
Suits are made with high quality polyester/spandex fabric that also provides UV protection and seamless (yay, no muffin top!) coverage. The reversible bikinis feature soft, skin-reminiscent shades on one side, then splashed with vibrant, colorful and one-of-a-kind prints the other. The prints were inspired by the beauty and diversity under our Philippine waters. “We purposely wanted to show the richness of our aquatic life so that somehow we can also stir up an awareness about conserving this eco-system,” says Meryll, recalling the lightbulb moment she had after a snorkeling trip at Dauin marine sanctuary. In the same way, the one-piece suits have net details, as a little “inception” that nets are better off fashionably worn. “The sad reality is that fishnets get discarded in the ocean and they can cause terrible harm,” explains Meryll.
While she could have easily highlighted the designs and merits of her suits, Meryll wanted to introduce Skinni by putting their values front and center, and assembled an awesome tribe of very real, very different women who embodied them. None of them looked like your typecast swimsuit models — because really, how many real women do? “Each one of them stands for something we value and yet we can’t typecast them as just that because they are all so multi-faceted,” describes Meryll. Shot against the rustic, raw, natural beauty in Dumaguete, Siquijor, and Dauin, these women — of different shapes, sizes, ages, sexuality, and backgrounds — stood out but together in their Skinni swimsuits, look strong, confident, and absolutely beautiful. These swimsuit images made you want to discover, explore and conquer, instead of feeling depressed about your lack of a thigh gap.
“The dream that I have for Skinni is that there is no prerequisite to avail of it,” says Meryll. “We do not ask you to lose five pounds, we do not expect you to change yourself. We think you are great the way you are.”
The campaign was so moving that the muses and the team couldn’t help but start sharing the stories and images on social media, and things came to a head when the confidently beautiful Pia Wurtzbach wore Skinni and showed it off in all her beautiful and powerful glory. “The feedback has been so phenomenal and incredibly touching,” breathes Meryll, happy and grateful. “It is truly vindicating and inspiring to find that women have been waiting to see something like this and we are more than happy to deliver it.”
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Website will be up and collection can be shopped soon. Mark your calendars April 15, 2017. Follow them on Facebook (fb.com/SKINNI) and Instagram (@skinniswim).
