The Only Way Is Intentional: Rays of Earth and the Case for Buying Better

The swimwear market is relentless. Fast fashion brands drop new swim edits every few weeks, trend cycles barely last a season, and the pressure to keep up with all of it is exhausting. Into this Joelle Saul, founder of new UK swimwear brand Rays of Earth, launched something that deliberately does the opposite. Slow, considered, built to last. And she's completely confident there's a place for it.

The idea didn't come from nowhere. Joelle grew up going to a small town in Italy every summer, where her family discovered a local bikini brand that made pieces so well constructed they lasted nearly a decade. "I still have a few of them," she says. That early experience gave her a benchmark. When she started looking for swimwear as an adult, she couldn't find anything that came close. "I would look online and only really be seeing Shein or Zara, fast fashion brands, and I didn't want to be spending my money there. But I also couldn't find anything as good as what I'd grown up wearing."

• 

• 

The frustration sat with her for years. Then two years ago, after six years as a dancer, she decided to do something about it. She kept it almost entirely to herself for the first year, researching quietly, following instincts she couldn't always explain. "I didn't know what I was doing, but I absolutely knew what I was doing," she says. "Everything just felt very natural. For the first time in my life I could just put my head down and work for hours on end. I was addicted to it."

Travel shaped the brand as much as that early frustration did. Joelle has spent significant time in Asia and across Europe, and the experience of being in natural environments, away from the rhythm of city life, fed directly into what she wanted Rays of Earth to be about. "We're nature deprived," she says plainly. "Any human that goes out into a forest or by the beach feels automatically more human. There's something so undeniable about being in nature." The brand isn't trying to sell that feeling so much as encourage women to go looking for it themselves, in something that actually fits and lasts.

• 

• 

Sustainability was never going to be an afterthought. Joelle visits her factories in Portugal in person, seeing working conditions firsthand, asking detailed questions about water consumption and waste. The factories run almost entirely on solar power. The fabrics, sourced from Italy and Spain, are 77 to 82 percent recycled. Every material used across the brand is either recycled, recyclable, or FSC certified. "I'm personally the one who's created this from start to finish," she says. "So all processes and all materials have been considered." She's aware of how much greenwashing exists in the sustainable fashion space and has no interest in adding to it. "I'd rather grow in a mindful, sustainable way than just join the trend of what people are doing."

The first collection, The Acacia Collection, is reversible and fully mix and match, any top with any bottom. It was partly a sustainability decision, buy less and wear more, but it was also about solving something practical. Women's bodies are different and swimwear has historically been bad at acknowledging that. "Swimwear is so intimate," Joelle says. "It has to do more than just look good. It needs to make you feel held, flattered, comfortable, excited to wear it."

What she's building is something that sits between two extremes that currently dominate the market. "A lot of it is very trend led, fast, disposable, or very minimal and serious. Or if it is eco, quite beige," she says. Rays of Earth is none of those things. The pieces are feminine and playful, full of colour and print, designed to connect you back to that uncomplicated feeling of being at the beach as a kid, happy to just be there.

In a few years, Joelle wants the brand to be recognisable for having a clear point of view, not just adding more product into an already overcrowded market. She'd love to expand into natural fibre summer pieces that sit alongside the swimwear. Most of all she wants to build a community of women who come back season after season because the brand actually means something to them.

The market is full. But there's always room for something made with the right intention behind it.