A former commercial fisherman widely credited with inventing the neoprene wetsuit. The attribution is incorrect—most historians now believe California physicist came up with it. (See Wetsuit.) But no one did a better job of making the wetsuit cool than Denver native O’Neill, a water-loving businessman who opened his first surf shop near San Francisco in 1952. O’Neill offered essential additions, including a stretchy nylon laminated onto the neoprene. More crucially, he popularized the image of the wetsuit-clad surfer, including one memorable ad that read “It’s Always Summer on the Inside” and featured a topless woman pulling on one of his suits. “He was a bearded one-eyed NorCal Don Draper,” says Matt Warshaw, author of .
(Photo: Tim Tomkinson)
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From ϳԹ Magazine, August 2015
Lead Photo: Tim Tomkinson