Our Vision

1. We change our apparel to our bodies, not the other way around.
2. We can choose what makes us feel our best each day, and that can change.
3. We take care of our home, whether that's our mental, physical, or emotional home.

Our Mission

Our mission at Haven Nova is to give our consumers the best opportunity for each and every day to be the best it can be while minimizing the impact on the planet. The fabric we use is a eco-friendly, 100% recycled material that is manufactured in a factory with great wages and working conditions. Our packaging is plastic free and made with compostable materials so that nothing sits in a landfill. 

Your Haven Nova Swimsuit is meant to last you through multiple wears and multiple ways, but when you're ready to part ways with your Haven Nova bathing suit, we will have a responsible recycling program so you can be reassured for the whole lifecycle of the swimsuit.

Our Founding Story

Hi! I'm Mariah Parsons and I grew up on the beaches of New Jersey. I started thinking of this swimsuit design when I was 24 and recovering from a herniated disc injury that left me using a walker for some months. When I finally got clearance to start working out again, it was to start swimming. So, I picked out the best one piece I had, put it on, and realized that I needed more support for swimming laps. I also wanted more coverage on top and on bottom, but I figured a towel would get me most of the way there. I didn’t want to buy a new bathing suit when I already had so many.

So for a quick solution to my worries about the support, I threw a sports bra on under my bathing suit. Some weeks later, the one piece started to wither away from use and the sports bra was ruined from the chlorine. 

I found myself once again frustrated by swimwear, a familiar feeling throughout my life.

You see, I was a competitive swimmer from age 5 to 13, and then a rower from 13 to 22, having completed four years of D1 athletics on Notre Dame's Women's Rowing Team. You'd think after a lifetime of growing up on the beach and practices in tight, athletic clothing that I would be confident or at least numb to wearing swimsuits and unis, but that couldn't be further from the truth. I’ve always had a tough relationship with skin-tight clothing.

I started thinking about all the frustrations I've had with swimwear since the first time I remember putting one on. At five years old, I remember how suffocating my competitive swimsuit was on my body. At 8, I remember how annoying it was to go to the bathroom in a soaking wet one piece. At 10, when I was in tankinis while all my friends were confident in bikinis. At 13, getting my period for the first time and worrying about the string showing in the bathing suit. At 14, being conscious in front of boys for the first time on a beach day in the summer. At 16, buying the trending padded swimsuit top that was too busty for me and garnered unwanted attention. At 18, winning NJ Rowing States and sucking in my tummy for the pictures in our uni. At 20, buying the swimsuit all my friends had even though it didn't fit my body well or really at all and telling myself 'some day this will look good on me'. At 24, tugging at my swimsuit bottoms wishing the fabric would magically expand to cover my butt from lingering eyes at the gym pool.

Even just from the early days of starting this brand, I've know a lot of us also struggle with similar chatter in our mind.

So while I continued swimming lap after lap, month after month, I started thinking about what the perfect bathing suit would be. I wanted one bathing suit that adjusted to my needs. I wanted one bathing suit that I could wear for swimming laps, lounging on the beach, playing a sand volleyball game, hanging with friends, family, and my romantic partner. I wanted the ability to change the coverage based on what I wanted that day - more boobies, less boobies, more booty, less booty, more tummy, less tummy. I wanted to take only one bathing suit with me on vacation and have multiple ways to wear it. And I wanted it to be CUTE. 

After some time, I had imagined a prototype that achieved all those things. But now I needed to see if I could take what was in my brain and actually make it a physical product. So I drove from Chicago to New Jersey to pick up my mom's old sewing machine, thrifted old bathing suits in my size, bought fabric on the clearance rack, and started to teach myself how to sew with Youtube. 

It was a lot of hours spent slowing down videos to 0.5 speed, flipping and folding fabric in my hands to figure out how to innovate beyond the sewing tutorials, ripping out stitches I had messed up, and too many times pricking myself with needles. But I got better with each prototype, and after 5 of them, I had a functional bathing suit. Then, we were off to the races to figure out how the heck does one make a business around a new category of swimwear, the best all-in-one bathing suit.

I never had the word 'entrepreneur' in my vocabulary until I started my professional career at an ecommerce tech company, Malomo. But through the years of experience, I learned that that's exactly what I've been my whole life, I just didn't know it. I've always had my hands in a lot of projects, and I'm thrilled Haven Nova is now blossoming into my proudest one. Sure, creating a new product and figuring out how to create a business around it is really exciting and pushing me to grow personally and professionally. 

But when I zoom out and think about the bigger picture, my hope is that by creating a bathing suit that can change with our personal needs, we're kinder to ourselves. I want Haven Nova to help move our generation away from those self-criticizing thoughts and make them become a thing of the past. I know I'm actively working to stop that chatter in my mind, and I would be so fulfilled and so honored to play a part in helping that chatter cease in someone else's mind.

So, now that I’ve (maybe) (probably) definitely overshared, I hope it resonated with you and you find what you're looking for, either generally in life, or at Haven Nova. Please join us for this crazy roller coaster, we'd love to have you :)