What Ocean Blues makes, and who it is for

A women's swimwear brand. Ocean Blues makes bikini tops and bikini bottoms sold separately, tankini tops and tankini sets, one-piece swimsuits with and without sleeves, board shorts, a swim skirt and a swim dress, on six shelves and in two size runs: a regular run from S to 3XL and a plus run from L+ to 4XL+. Almost everything costs between nine and forty dollars, and every card prints the cup, the wire, the coverage, the size run and the colourways before you click.

No. The Ocean Blue is a band from Pennsylvania, and "Pacific Ocean Blues" and "Ocean Blues" are songs. Ocean Blues, with the s, is the swimwear brand on this site, and if you typed the name looking for a tankini rather than a record, you are in the right place. The spelling is the only thing the three share.

Three things you can check before you click. The cup is named in words on the card, built-in bra, molded, padded, push-up or removable, and so is the wire, so a photograph of a bandeau is not the only evidence of what is holding it up. The size run is on the card too, with the run it belongs to, and the chart behind it is on the buying page in inches. And the top and the bottom are sold apart, so a body that is two letters on top and below buys two letters.

The trade is the fabric. A fifteen-dollar bikini bottom is not a ninety-dollar one, it fades sooner in chlorine, and the card does not pretend otherwise.

A woman buying on her phone for a week that is already planned: a lake in July, a cruise, a pool with the children, a first swimsuit in three years. Within that, the tankinis and the ruched one-pieces are for anyone who wants the middle covered; the tie-back bandeau and the push-up halter for a full bust that wants lift; the long-sleeve zip suits for a whole day in the sun; and the plus run, eight pieces cut with more room at the same letter, for a body the regular run stops short of. The fitting guide on the front page, the Ocean Blues way of choosing a letter, is written for someone who has never held a tape under her own bust.

Not on this site. Everything here is swimwear for women, including the board shorts and the swim skirt, which are swim fabric cut as a short and a skirt rather than beachwear. There are no cover-ups, no children's suits and no men's trunks on these shelves, because a site that sells a swimsuit by the cup and the size run should not also be selling a towel.

Since 2018, which is 8 years of the same two questions: will it hold, and will it cover what I want covered. The useful part of that is not the anniversary but its consequence. The tie-back bandeau, the side-cutout bottom and the twist-front tankini have kept their cuts across those years while the colourways turned over, so a buyer replacing a suit that finally faded can find the same cut by its name rather than by hope.

Every buying button on this site opens the piece you were looking at, in the colourway you chose, at our retail partner, where the size is picked, the payment is taken and any exchange is handled. The catalogue button at the foot of every page opens the whole range in one place instead of one suit.