This campaign began with a feeling. You know the kind, warm, steady, like being held by someone who’s known you since before you knew yourself. That feeling of women. Of matriarchs. Of story-keepers and culture-carriers. Of hands that taught us, fed us, made us who we are. An Ode to Her is for them.
It’s also Nara’s most personal project to date.
At the heart of it all is Sarah, the founder of Nara Swim. A proud Chinese-Australian woman raised by her mother and grandmother, two women who held culture close in a world that didn’t always make room for it. For Sarah, this collaboration wasn’t just a nice idea or good timing. It was a calling. A moment to honour the legacy of strong women. To work with people who share that strength. And to finally launch a campaign that reflects the values her brand has always stood for, integrity, care, community, and style with soul.
Enter Susu & Meli. The dream collaborators who don’t just get culture, they protect it, live it, and build futures with it. As a creative consultancy rooted in Pacific heritage, they’ve brought a depth to this campaign that’s impossible to replicate. Through them, Nara connected with the Salu family of Savai’i, Samoa—an intergenerational powerhouse of siapo artists who’ve transformed their ancestral knowledge into breathtaking contemporary prints.
Each swimwear piece is more than beautiful, it’s a vessel of memory, modernity, and meaning. The brown print Puipuiga honours environmental protectors. The black print Sei reflects the life cycle of a flower, its beauty, its fade, and the seeds it leaves behind. Just like the women who raised us.
But this isn’t a campaign about looking back. It’s about carrying forward.
Through ethical production, fair pay, and storytelling that centres the hands behind the work, An Ode to Her is helping reshape what fashion can be. It’s slow, considered, and dripping in intention. There are no token gestures here. No borrowed motifs or exoticised edits. Just honest collaboration, led by trust and designed with respect.
From the handmade siapo tools passed down through generations, to the BTS videos showing their process, everything about this campaign asks you to feel deeper. To look past trends. To wear your values like you wear your swimmers, proudly, comfortably, with a bit of SPF and a lot of meaning.
This is not just swimwear. It’s a conversation. A connection. A quiet revolution stitched into fabric. And we couldn’t be prouder to bring it to you.
So here’s to the women who shaped us. To the stories they carried. And to what we get to carry forward.
With love, respect, and salt on our skin,
Nara x