The fabric in your bikini matters more than people realize.
A standard mass-market swimsuit is made from virgin nylon — petroleum-based polyamide, freshly extracted, freshly polluted into existence. It will outlast you. Then it will sit in a landfill for 30 to 40 years, releasing microplastics into soil and groundwater.
Our Cala Loca swimwear — the Triangle Bikini, the Tulip Bikini, the Tulip Swimsuit — uses something different. A regenerated, recycled nylon called Vita Power Eco, made by Carvico in northern Italy. Here's what that means.
What is Vita Power Eco?
Vita Power Eco is the eco-conscious version of Carvico's flagship Vita Power fabric — a high-performance stretch fabric used by premium swimwear brands for decades. Both fabrics are nylon-elastane blends with the same sculptural drape, chlorine resistance, and recovery properties. The difference: Vita Power Eco's nylon is 100% regenerated.
"Regenerated" doesn't mean "made from a plant." It means the nylon comes from pre-existing nylon waste — fishing nets recovered from oceans, carpet offcuts, industrial fabric scraps. The waste is chemically broken back down to its raw monomer (caprolactam), then re-polymerized into virgin-quality nylon yarn. The output is chemically identical to fresh nylon, but every kilogram diverts a kilogram of waste from the environment.
This is sometimes called ECONYL nylon — a brand of regenerated nylon developed by Aquafil. Vita Power Eco uses ECONYL yarn.
Why fishing nets?
About 10% of all marine plastic pollution is lost fishing gear — nets, lines, traps. Once a net is lost or discarded at sea, it doesn't stop catching: it becomes a "ghost net," continuing to trap fish, dolphins, turtles, and seabirds for years.
Programs like Healthy Seas — partnered with Aquafil — recover these nets from oceans worldwide and feed them into the ECONYL supply chain. So when you buy a Cala Loca bikini, you're indirectly funding the removal of fishing gear from the sea.
How it feels different
Recycled doesn't mean compromised. Vita Power Eco actually outperforms standard nylon on several fronts:
- Stronger — the regenerated nylon has a tighter molecular structure after polymerization
- More chlorine-resistant — it lasts through pool seasons that wreck cheaper swimwear
- Better UV protection — the fabric blocks UV-A and UV-B better than standard nylon
- Faster drying — the weave wicks water out rather than holding it
In practice, this means a Triangle Bikini that holds its shape through hundreds of wears, hundreds of washes, and doesn't pill or thin out at the seams.
No synthetic dyes
The other thing we do differently: no synthetic chemical dyes. The Triangle and Tulip pieces come in natural, undyed beige — a colour that comes from the natural fiber tone of the recycled fishnet itself. We didn't strip the colour, then re-add a different one. We left it as it arrived.
This eliminates the dye-bath stage of production, which is one of the most water-intensive and chemically polluting steps in textile manufacturing. A single conventional dye bath can use 200 litres of water per kilogram of fabric.
Made in Bali, finished by hand
Carvico mills the fabric in Italy. We send it to our partner atelier in Bali, where it's cut by hand and finished by local artisans. Each piece is sewn one-at-a-time. Each band, each tie, each seam is done by a human.
This is slower than machine-mass-production by orders of magnitude. It's also why the fit is so different — Cala Loca bikinis are shaped to the body, not stamped from a single pattern.
The pieces
- Triangle Bikini Top + Bottom — the clean classic. Adjustable ties, fits like the bikinis you remember from the 90s, made better.
- Tulip Bikini Top + Bottom — sculptural, ruched, slightly more dressed-up. Same Vita Power Eco fabric.
- Tulip Swimsuit — the one-piece. Sculpted V neckline, fluid back, made for the full beach-to-dinner-with-a-linen-shirt-over-it move.
- Lustrous Macramé Dress — not Vita, but our handwoven macramé companion piece. Sequins knotted into the weave itself.
All sized XS–L. All limited drops. All shipped worldwide from Spain.
Care
Hand-wash cold with mild soap after every wear (especially after pool/salt). Lay flat to dry. Don't tumble dry. Don't wring. Don't iron. Don't store damp. With this care, a Vita Power Eco bikini lasts 5+ seasons easily.
Worth knowing
Recycled nylon costs more than virgin nylon. Hand-finishing in Bali costs more than factory production. No-dye production limits our colour range.
We've made these choices because they're the only choices we can live with. If you've ever held a Cala Loca piece in your hand, you've felt the difference. It's heavier than mass-market swimwear. The seams are tighter. The fabric springs back faster.
Limited drops. Never repeated. When sizes are gone, they're gone.