Born in New England. Made in New England. Surfed in cold water everywhere. Photo: Crooked
New Englanders have a reputation for being business-like, sometimes at the expense of affability. Our blunt outer shells – a shield from the elements, perhaps – can be tough to crack.
However, if you need help, we’ll give you the shirt off our back and the keys to the Dunkin’ down the street. Seriously, we know a guy.
We also know some wetsuit guys who are in the business of keeping cold-water surfers warm and helping the planet at the same time.
The idea for Crooked Wetsuits sprouted in the mind of founder and Massachusetts surfer Mark Cruickshank (get it, Cruickshank to Crooked?) around 2020. CMO Dustin Devlin, who lives and surfs in Southern Maine, characterizes Cruickshank’s mind as eternally focused on “fixing problems and finding solutions.”
In this case, the problem was that cold-water surfers like Devlin, Cruickshank, and marketing lead Erik Hibbard couldn’t find suits that kept them toasty during New England’s punishing winters, when the waves are more consistent. The team set out to craft an answer to this toe-numbing riddle, yet they also wanted to keep the suits affordable for everyday surfers. Plus, they’d spent enough time ripping through $500 big-name suits – they’d need to find a way to make their suits durable, too.
If these strike you as lofty goals for a brand-new start-up, they are. However, never underestimate the briny ingenuity of New Englanders – or the motivating blast of blowing a seam in 35-degree water. The Crooked team knew that other small brands were using Yamamoto neoprene, but to procure this borderline magical material, ties needed to be made with manufacturers in Japan. Luckily, Cruickshank was game.
This wasn’t a get-rich-quick scheme. At first, according to Devlin, who also runs a production company called Vagrants, “Mark wasn’t considering branding or selling the suits, he just liked having them for himself and a few friends.” Devlin remembers their first paddle in their prototyped suits as a total game changer. Suddenly the Crooked crew had a direct line on warm, flexible, affordable gear.
They almost stopped there, but Devlin and Cruickshank recognized that they’d lined up in a crater-sized hole within the market. There were no brands making suits “directly for cold-water surfers at a reasonable price point,” and the company’s focus became making straightforward, high-performance wetsuits that “salty new England types could get behind,” says Devlin.
The young brand quickly established a strong line of communication with local surfers who became brand ambassadors, as is evident in a website video in which Cape Cod local Brendan “Sully” Sullivan ducks icy barrels in his backyard, smiling ear to ear. Cate Brown, also an ambassador, says that from day one, “it felt great to be part of a team that was actually from the Northeast, all actually surf, [and] have experience in our colder conditions.” Brown, a photographer from Rhode Island, laments that a lot of wetsuit brands focus on warm water swells or have been bought out by large corporations.
Feedback from surfers allows Crooked to gather info and add and edit features to improve their line. Reinforcements such as extra layers of seal, added neoprene and bungee-cord-type zip ties in the hoods and built-in face coverings have heated the hearts of many New Englanders as they paddle straight into another Nor’easter (pronounced Nor-East-Ah).
Crooked also sought to design suits specifically for women from the start. Pat Howley, a ripper in his own right and Crooked’s Head of Community, regularly checks in with the brand’s female ambassadors regarding fit, performance, and possible improvements. Brown, who duck-dives her camera more often than her board, says that Crooked delivers the goods for women in a “wide range of sizes that helps account for different body types,” and the brand’s attention to detail shows in terms of fit and warmth.
Sustainability is also a huge sticking point for Cruickshank, who’s pre-Crooked conundrum was trying to figure out if wooden blanks could improve the surfboard industry’s ecological footprint. Early on, Crooked locked onto the idea of recycling old suits. Surf shops and other companies offer recycling programs, but Crooked incentivizes the process: send them an old suit and they reward you with a $50 voucher. In the program’s first week, the guys collected hundreds of suits, and they’re currently turning your malodourous ’90s neoprene into a down-cycled changing mat.
As someone who learned to surf in New England’s winter waters over 20 years ago, I spent many frosty days in suits that felt like straitjackets. Before I learned about dental floss and wetsuit glue, I also slapped waterproof duct tape on any holes, which worked about as well as you’d expect. In any case, I have a closet full of beloved suits in various degrees of thickness and disrepair, some replete with techno-vapor-fire whatever it is. Crooked’s no-frills formula, however, works off simplicity: use the highest-quality neoprene while ensuring that the suit is flexible enough. If surfers can paddle more, they will generate more body heat.
Having temporarily moved to Southern California, I was “forced” to test these suits in warmer waters, but my first impression of Yamamoto City was: I’m never going back. The flex makes the suits remarkably easy to paddle in, the glove-like fit is on the money, and one of my notes simply reads: “wicked warm.” The 3/2 is the ideal suit for our current SoCal water temps, which range anywhere from 57-61. The 4/3 felt almost too warm on a “cooler” SoCal day that would be balmy by New England standards, and I can’t wait to try it out next winter in Rhode Island.
One detail that stands out is the two-seam cuff on the wrists, which technically increases fuses wrists to gloves. I don’t wear gloves out here, but the wrists (and ankles) form an extremely tight barrier against the tides, with a resounding snap when you pull them on. In fact, every Crooked seam and zipper feels bulletproof, even when I was in a rush and haphazardly yanked it off. I envision Cruickshank – who Devlin describes as a “tinkerer” – doubling-down on the spots where his last wetsuit began to fray.
Crooked’s attention to detail makes a difference: a color band on the cuff signals the suits thickness and helps you recognize your buddies in the lineup. The logo on the back shoulder filled me with a ’90s skateboarding vibe until Devlin described it as a tribute to the Grateful Dead’s iconic dancing bears, which makes sense.
I know, you stopped reading at “dancing bears”—but humor me. In an interview with the Kook Cast pod, Devlin details a typical New England situation: crappy surf for three months, then suddenly its double-overheard with a macking sub-zero windchill. Even better, you’ve been on a steady diet of Nick’s Roast Beef and Ipswich IPAs for months. What do you do?
You suck it up and get out there. You grab some waves before you’re pile-driven into Kookdom Come by a rogue ice bomb and you come up grinning. The attitude that Crooked embodies – a little bonkers, a little badass, and completely their own – is so distinctly New England that it makes me more homesick than Noah Kahan.
Future-wise, the team sees potential in cold-water destinations like Ireland and Canada, but they want to be wicked clear, Kid, that they’re all about their hometown. “If you can stay warm in New England,” says Devlin, “you can stay warm anywhere.”
My last note on the suits reads as such: “these guys frickin’ know what they’re doing.”
From one New Englanda to anotha, that’s about as big a compliment as you can get.
Editor’s Note: We allowed our esteemed Northeast-born writer to root for the home team here. For a more objective wetsuit review, click this link.
