Most swimwear prints are digital. A pattern is created on a computer, repeated across a tile, and printed onto fabric at scale. It is fast, cheap, and produces the kind of busy, generic patterns you see replicated across a dozen different brands in the same season.
Raw X Salt prints work differently.
Hand-illustrated originals
Every Raw X Salt print starts as a hand illustration. Holiday Blues and Tan Lines -- our two current prints -- were created as original artworks before they became swimwear. They are not digital patterns or licensed graphics. They were drawn by hand and translated into fabric through a process that preserves the texture and imperfection of the original illustration.
This matters for a few reasons. Hand-illustrated prints have a visual quality that digital prints do not -- there is variation in line weight, depth, and tone that catches light differently and looks distinct in person from how it photographs. It also means the print is genuinely exclusive. You will not find Holiday Blues or Tan Lines on another brand's swimwear.
Holiday Blues
Holiday Blues is a blue-toned illustrative print. The palette draws from ocean and sky -- deep navy, soft aqua, coastal blue -- rendered in a loose, expressive hand that feels more like a painting than a pattern. It works particularly well in direct sun, where the tonal variation in the illustration becomes more visible.
Holiday Blues is available across the full swimwear range -- tops, bottoms, and the Weekender one piece. It pairs naturally with Zephyr (sky blue) block colour pieces, which pick up the cooler tones in the print.
Tan Lines
Tan Lines has a warmer palette -- terracotta, warm sand, burnt orange, and earthy brown tones rendered in the same loose illustrative style as Holiday Blues. Where Holiday Blues is coastal and cool, Tan Lines is warm and tropical. It references the sun-bleached, salt-dried feeling of a long beach summer.
Tan Lines pairs well with Clay (warm earth tone) and Intenso (black) block colour pieces. The warmer tones in the print make it one of the most flattering prints against a range of skin tones.
The fabric behind the print
Raw X Salt printed styles are made from REPREVE® recycled nylon -- a certified recycled yarn made from pre-consumer nylon waste. REPREVE is lighter in weight than ECONYL (used in our solid colours) and takes printed dye particularly well, producing colour depth and clarity that holds across multiple seasons with proper care.
The dyes used on our printed fabrics are certified by OEKO-TEX®, meaning they are free from harmful substances. The print is not just beautiful -- it is clean.
Why we keep the print range small
Raw X Salt runs two prints at a time, not twenty. This is a deliberate choice. A smaller print range means each print gets proper development time, proper fabric testing, and a proper run across the full range of styles. It also means our prints are more distinctive -- when you wear Holiday Blues or Tan Lines, it is recognisable as a Raw X Salt print, not a generic pattern shared across a category.
When a print is retired, it is retired. We do not rerun old prints. Past prints -- Sriracha, Nacho Sun, Sweet Spot, Neon Reef, Wishbone -- are archive only, which is why pieces from those collections hold their value and why customers who find them secondhand tend to hold onto them.
Mix print and block colour
Because tops and bottoms are sold individually, you can combine a print top with a block colour bottom or vice versa. The prints and block colours are designed to work together. Holiday Blues with Zephyr. Tan Lines with Clay or Intenso. The combinations are intentional, not accidental.