Our Story
One patent-pending suit that transforms into 96 styles for the perfect fit every time you wear it.
After 15 years of swimsuit frustration, our founder spent 80 hours at a sewing machine to prove she could fix the industry. The result is an empowering suit that adapts to you, not the other way around.
I dread swimsuits, but I've spent a life in them
I love all the activities that require bathing suits, I just hate wearing them. Haven Nova officially started at 25, when I was recovering from a herniated disc that had left me using a walker and then a cane for some months. While I was rehabbing, I started swimming laps at my local gym.
I grabbed the one one-piece I already owned, even though it was cheekier than I wanted and didn’t give me the support I needed so I wore a sports bra underneath it. I remember putting my towel down, walking toward the pool, not feeling confident, and immediately wanting to cover up.
I was so tired of a bathing suit deciding how much of my body I had to show, how supported I could feel, and what I could comfortably do in it. I jumped into the pool and started swimming, and lap after lap I kept thinking: why can’t my bathing suit change based on what I need that day?
That was the moment I stopped accepting swimwear as it was and started imagining what it could be.
One day at the pool = 20 years of frustration
The thing is, that moment wasn’t really about one swimsuit. I grew up on the beaches of New Jersey, swam competitively from five to thirteen, rowed from thirteen to twenty-two, when I spent four years as a D1 athlete at Notre Dame.
Swimsuits, unis, and tight athletic clothing had been part of my life forever and so has the chatter that came with them.
At eight, my competition suit dug into my skin. At thirteen, I was wearing tankinis while my friends confidently wore bikinis. At sixteen, I bought the trendy padded top that brought attention I didn’t want.
At eighteen, I won NJ Rowing States and was concerned about how I looked in photos. At twenty two, I was competing at the ACC conference championships, still overly stressed about how I looked in my uni. I had tried just about every kind of swimsuit imaginable, but somehow I had never found one that left me feeling good.
I want less stress in a bathing suit
That is what I want Haven Nova to change. I don’t want us spending our lives trying to change our bodies to fit our clothes. I want our clothes to change with us.
Some days we want more coverage, some days less. Some days we want to swim laps or play beach volleyball; other days we want to lie in the sun, hang with our families, or feel sexy with our partners. None of those versions of us is more deserving of confidence than another.
Haven Nova started with me trying to build one bathing suit that could move through all of those moments with me, but my hope for this brand is much bigger: to help make the self-critical chatter so many of us carry around a little quieter. If Haven Nova can give someone more control over what she wears and help her spend less time thinking about how her body looks and more time actually living her life, that's the dream. Because I want that for myself.
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