Melissa Odabash Brand Guidelines: The Model Who Built a Swimwear Label in 1999

A swimwear model who preferred to cut her own.

Melissa Odabash is a swim and resort label named after its founder, an American former model based in London. The company says she founded it in 1999, and Retail & Leisure International gave the same year in July 2024, when it reported the brand’s 25th anniversary. The Mishcon de Reya podcast Jazz Shapers, in a March 2024 interview, said she launched the label in the UK with a small capsule of block-colour bikinis, then moved into beachwear based on her mother’s 1970s crochet pieces.

The idea came out of her modelling work. English Wikipedia says she grew up in New Jersey. She told Jazz Shapers she was scouted there and moved to Paris and then Rome. She said she modelled for houses including Fendi and Valentino, and told Retail & Leisure International she worked as a fit model for Prada and Valentino, which taught her about fabrics and fit. That magazine quoted her saying that her swimwear jobs were all “fluorescent colours with super cutouts,” and that she wanted to make something timeless instead.

Sources place her start in different Italian cities. English Wikipedia says she sold hand-made swimwear to independent boutiques in Milan, while she told Stories Parfums in 2022 that she was a swim model in Rome when she decided to begin. In Jazz Shapers she described how it worked: she bought fabric with her modelling money, made samples, sold them to other models backstage and then took them to the best boutiques herself. She also recalled the practical difficulty of starting a business abroad in a foreign language.

The move to the United States market came through a magazine. She said that about two years after those boutique visits she moved to London, and that an American friend leaving Rome took her sample line home and placed it in Sports Illustrated. Her first shoot there featured models including Tyra Banks and Heidi Klum, she said, and she then offered department stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue a credit in the magazine if they took the line. Resident wrote in June 2025 that this feature was her breakthrough.

Partners, prints and an anniversary.

An early partnership was with Speedo. FashionUnited reported in July 2003 that Speedo was marking its 75th anniversary with a high-fashion capsule by Odabash: a one-piece and a bikini for Selfridges and selected independent shops, plus one-off pieces. FashionUnited’s German edition added in December 2003 that the line was for spring/summer 2004, that the one-piece fastened with a silver buckle over one shoulder and the bikini used horn rings. It said the rock musician Bryan Adams photographed the one-offs on people including Jerry Hall and Naomi Campbell, and that the pieces would be auctioned in London for the charity Haven Trust.

Other partnerships followed. She told The Daily Front Row in June 2016 that she had worked with Gwyneth Paltrow for Goop and had just launched with Target; the same interview introduced a capsule for The Outnet, launching that month. Grazia reported in June 2015 that Odabash & Macdonald, her line with the designer Julien Macdonald, was in its fifth season, combining his embroidery with her kaftans and swimwear. English Wikipedia records a line of unisex hats in 2012 to raise money for the Elton John AIDS Foundation, and The Wick Culture said in August 2022 that she launched a mastectomy line in 2015.

The range has widened beyond swimwear. Retail & Leisure International reported a recently launched loungewear collection and a ready-to-wear line in recycled fabrics in 2024, and Resident mentioned accessories and an Après collection of draped dresses in 2025. She told Jazz Shapers that loungewear was an easy addition because she travels constantly, and that she still treats it as resort wear.

The label’s 25th anniversary was marked with a show at Miami Swim Week. Resident reported that it took place on 31 May 2025, with Kelly Bensimon closing it, and the company says it was held at the Bass Museum of Art and included runway-only pieces drawing on early favourites. Resident said the Cruise 2025 collection was shot in the Caribbean and drew on her mother and 1970s beach style, in caftans, maxi dresses and woven separates.

Design and documentation.

Swimwear and resort labels sell a place as much as a garment, so their visual identity tends to start with the setting. Seafolly’s website speaks of Bondi Beach and the Australian beach lifestyle; Vilebrequin’s speaks of Saint-Tropez in 1971. For a designer, the useful question is how that place is carried through photographs, shop interiors and the small printed items around a sale.

The printed fabric is the first thing to study. In this category a swatch can work like a logo: Vilebrequin’s chief executive told The Week in 2017 that it made a sea-turtle print every year in a different colour, and its website describes lining up a back pocket by hand so the pattern runs across it. A print archive, where a label keeps one, gives it a repeatable source of colour and motif from year to year.

Lookbooks then supply the setting. Beach huts, pool edges, towels and harbour walls appear often in this kind of photography, and they do the job a product shot cannot, by showing the clothes in the place they are meant for. Collection names often work the same way: Ragtrader’s report on Seafolly’s summer 2020 range lists names such as Summer Memoirs and Check In, each tied to a print.

Boutique displays and packaging finish the picture. A stack of folded prints reads as a colour field; a swing tag, box or pouch carries the mark away from the shop. Each brand in this guide sets out who founded it, who owns it now and what it says about where its goods are made, and marks what rests on the company’s own word. The palettes here are our own interpretations, not official colours.

Made in Italy, by its founder’s account.

The manufacturing claim comes from the founder. “All of my swimwear is made in Italy,” she told Retail & Leisure International in July 2024, and she said on Jazz Shapers that year that she has kept the “same factories in Italy.” She said she buys most of her fabrics in Paris or Italy, and that she lines swimwear with the same fabric as the outer layer so it holds its shape. Those are the company’s own statements.

The retail network has grown from those boutique visits. English Wikipedia says she opened a store in Notting Hill in 2007, followed by one in Chelsea. Retail & Leisure International reported in 2024 that the company sold in 72 countries and ran six stores across the UK, France, Greece, Italy and Türkiye, including a new shop in St Tropez and one opened at Costa Navarino in 2023. Other counts differ: Jazz Shapers said 75 countries the same year. Resident named Saks, Bergdorf Goodman, Net-a-Porter and Harrods among stockists in 2025. A Stories Parfums interview described it in 2022 as a company “solely owned and run by a woman.”

Recognition has followed the founder. Stories Parfums quotes Vogue calling her swimwear “The Ferraris of the bikini world,” while English Wikipedia words the line as “Ferraris of swimwear.” English Wikipedia also says she won the Designer of the Year award at the Salon International de la Lingerie in 2014, and that she was appointed an honorary MBE in June 2021 for services to international swimwear fashion, with the presentation at Buckingham Palace in November 2022. The company says she was inducted into the Swimwear Icons Hall of Fame and given the Designer Icon Award during Miami Swim Week 2026.

Her own remarks sketch the look. In The Daily Front Row in 2016 she mentioned white, black, bronze and her “trademark lizard” print. The company says it refreshes vintage prints and early silhouettes, and its about page speaks of “timeless resort style.” Its website sits at odabash.com rather than under the full name.

For a design guide, Melissa Odabash shows how a founder’s working history can become a label’s story. Compare Speedo, her 2003 anniversary partner, and Hunza G, another London-based swimwear label. For this guide we use a deep lagoon, sand and bronze with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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