Us Girls by Laneski
IN If you were expecting to see teenage girls skipping along in floral bikinis,you have come to the wrong place.Us Girls is a clothing line which seeks to empower women through fashion. Emerging as "the original women's surf line" in the early 90s,Us Girls was the first to design functional surf fashion and was sold across the U.S. and Japan. In 2006, Us Girls expanded and was introduced in The Armory Workmen's/Balance and The House of Flys as an urban apparel label.
The collection includes a full range of graphic tees, innovative club wear and bikinis which have been exhibited at the B-Girl Be Summit, Legions Art Exhibit and others.
Designer Lane Davey is the epitome of keepin it real.Her designs revolutionized women's surf fashion from the Northshore of Oahu. She innovated the first women's boardshort, in 1993, won the Hawaii state surfing championships in 1994, and started selling Us Girls to local shops shortly thereafter. She was also the first to use real women surfers and a women's surf team in her marketing campaign. Some of the most hardcore and extreme women surfers in the world represented the team wearing the functional surfwear while challenging the line ups at places like Pipeline, Waimea Bay, Sunset Beach and Haleiwa.
By 1998, Lane was working with about 40-50 surf shops and swim botiques across the U.S. mainland and had a distributor in Japan while competing on the women's pro surf tour. With a surboard bag under one arm and a sample bag under the other, she took her designs to nearly every corner of the globe including, Africa, Australia, France and the continental U.S. Her designs have also been published in magazines locally and internationally. By 2001, she had dropped off the tour to put all her focus towards her passion for riding the Pipeline. She became one of the first women to surf it consistenly and to paddle out to the second reef. Lane's prowess and dedication at Pipe helped to inspire the first women's surfing contest there in 2005. She not only surfed in the first Pipe event, but was an essential ingredient behind the scenes volunteering her time to design the website reaching out to women worldwide who she knew would enjoy the challenge and making sure the story got run to an international press after.
The name Laneski stems from her roots as an original 80s B-Girl (breakdancer) in Seattle making the authenticity of her new urban apparel range somewhat undeniable. Lane's original Puma's from the early 80s are in the Smithsonian's collection for the new Hip Hop Wont Stop exhibit. Her involvement in the Hip Hop Community over the last few years is what inspired the new collection. She has supported and attended several underground Hip Hop events such as the B-Boy Reunion in Honolulu and the B-Boy Summit in L.A. and teaches free Foundation Hip Hop classes during the summer.