Myrtle Beach woman’s ‘sexy pink wetsuit’ makes cameo on ‘Tiffany Haddish does Shark Week’
Melodie Meyer will happily admit she had no idea what she was doing when she set out to create her own line of wetsuits.
Yet, all of her work — phone calls to friends with random connections to the fashion industry, a dozens of emails with a wetsuit manufacturing plant and a burgeoning credit card bill — became worth it this week when Tiffany Haddish strutted out on a boat wearing Meyer’s hot pink wetsuit during an episode of Discovery’s “Shark Week.”
“I was like, ‘Oh, my God,’ I couldn’t believe it,” Meyer said. “(Haddish) walked down the ladder of the ship and boy, did she work it.”
Meyer graduated from Myrtle Beach High School in 1980 and within a few years moved out to Los Angeles. She now lives in Venice Beach where she sees surfers and divers heading out in wetsuits all the time.
For years, though, she has found most wetsuits to be horrifically ugly.
“The only thing that hasn’t been done in fashion is a wetsuit,” she said. “The best looking people on the planet, surfers, are wearing freaking hazmat uniforms.”
She decided she wanted to make a wetsuit that was more attractive but had no idea where to start. What she did know was that she wanted to make sure whatever she made was environmentally friendly, so she found the factory that makes wetsuits for Patagonia, looking to copy their longtime brand of environmentalism.
“I drew a stick figure with a wet suit that’s pink and said, ‘I’m going to start a wetsuit line,’” she said.
Meyer has been an entrepreneur for most of her life, working in industries like real estate, furniture importing and vintage clothing. She had no idea all of the steps it would take to get her wetsuit fabric. The various chains of command she would have to sort through.
Meyer felt a bit ridiculous when the factory asked for details about what she was looking to do, admitting that she wanted a wetsuit that you could both “wear into the ocean and wear to the club.”
“That’s the dumbest thing you can say to someone, but that’s what I wanted,” she said.
But someday, somehow, Meyer got the factory to agree to make her aggressively hot pink wet suit fabric.
Next, Meyer had to figure out the design, and a friend of hers connected her to a fashion school to design the patterning. Once she had all that figured out, she was able to have the fabric sent to a factory that could actually cut and sew the wetsuits together. After nearly four years, Meyer had done it. She had her glittery, hot pink wet suits in hand.
“I went a bit overboard because I like pink and sparkly a lot, but if you’re going to do it, you might as well go all the way with it,” she said.
Meyer has now had Mermaid Wave Wear for sale for two years, but her big break was when she got the call about Shark Week.
‘Tiffany Haddish does Shark Week’
Haddish was prepping to help marine researchers Craig O’Connell and Alannah Vellacott dive into the Pacific and get an ultrasound of a pregnant tiger shark.
O’Connell told Haddish that most, if not all, of the sharks down in the water would be female.
“I’m with it, but I think I’ve got something that will bring the boys to the yard,” she said. “I feel like we will see some claspers,” referring to the appendages found on male sharks. “I’m excited.”
Haddish then strutted out wearing Meyer’s hot pink wetsuit, which had been bejeweled with glittering rhinestones.
It’s really not functional at all, but I want one,” Vellacott said.
“I’ve never seen anything like that in my entire life,” O’Connell said.
Before the episode of “Tiffany Haddish does Shark Week” aired, Meyer avoided keeping her hopes up about whether her outfit would appear on the show. But this week, she flipped on her TV and her dream became reality.
Meyer hopes that the extra publicity from Shark Week will help her grow her customer base. So far, she’s sold less than 100 wetsuits. Part of the problem, she says, is that the surf shops she’s spoken to won’t carry it.
“The surf industry is like, ‘what the hell is that,’” Meyer said. “I totally get it. They’re used to black. It’s easy, simple. I totally understand it.”
With Shark Week, Meyer’s dream that people would be able to go diving, and go to the club, came true, as Haddish says toward the end of the show, “I got dressed up for the club, thinking I’m going to attract, you know, the male sharks.”
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Missed the episode? It, and the rest of Shark Week, is available on Discovery+.
