Our Family’s Swimsuits Were Designed By World-Famous Architect Frank Gehry, And Innovation Is Worth Some Discomfort

Kids, we haven’t planned a getaway in ages, and I think we deserve an escape — it’s time to squish our toes into soft sand, breathe in the salty sea air, and squeeze our spongy bodies into our razor-sharp edifices of glass, concrete, and metal.

Don’t even start with me. We’ve all been so impatient and snappish with each other, and I don’t want to hear another word. We are going on vacation. We are wearing our exclusive, ruinously expensive, inexplicably pointy Frank Gehry swimsuits. We are going to have a wonderful time, and that’s final.

Let me remind you how lucky we are. Not all families could commission swimsuits from the visionary architect behind the Bilbao Effect, revitalizing cities with his category-defying aesthetic. Not all families would, either, but look how our Gehry suits revitalize our derrieres!

He has reimagined the form a tankini can take, and when it comes to swimsuits, function is really secondary.

Do our bathing costumes occupy entire city blocks with their unwieldy, overlapping angles? Yes. Does that make it hard to swim? Maybe. Do we have to leave our minivan behind and load our luggage, ourselves, and our heavy earth-moving equipment onto a freight train? Sure, but family vacations aren’t about comfort or convenience — they’re about pulling out all the stops and being miserable together.

Don’t tell me you have to pee. Don’t tell me you’re peeing inside the suits — right now, while you’re trying them on — because you can’t take them off in time to go to the bathroom. For one thing, I warned you to lay off the Capri Sun.

Also, your suits have bathrooms, kids, and they’re magnificent, and my God, I thought I raised you better than this.

Sure, a swimsuit can be made of elastic and chlorine-resistant Spandex. But can’t it also be sixty-five feet high and topped with a prismatic pyramid? It can, Elizabeth, and yours is, so stop crying about it.

I know it’s hot, but we’re vacationing next to an enormous body of water, so you’ll cool off. Besides, there’s very little potential for third degree burns. Unless you stand too near your brother’s swimsuit. Jimmy’s trunks incorporate the Walt Disney Concert Hall and eighty-seven luxury condominiums, all wrapped in dangerously reflective stainless steel.

But on the bright side — HA! — we’ll never lose him at the beach again. You know Jimmy’s a runner.

Speaking of running, Elizabeth, stop scurrying off to modify your swimsuit. I paid good money, and I won’t have you ruining my investment with cantilevered beams. As long as you’re under my glassy, perplexingly avant-garde roof, you will respect my rules, and no child of mine is wearing a Frank Lloyd Wright one-piece.

It’s for your own good, sweetheart. Mr. Wright’s designs are always damp, no matter how much light they let in, so they mildew. You don’t want to be the smelly kid at the beach, do you? And those overhanging eaves will only deprive you of vitamin D. Besides, our rental condo won’t let anyone wear Fallingwater — the leaks are right there in the name. We’ll never get our deposit back.

I know you’re at that self-defining age, but you’ll have plenty of time to slip into something a little more Usonian when you’re all grown up, if you haven’t come to your senses by then. For now, honey, I need you to dry your tears. You’ll rust your swimsuit.

I’m so glad we had this chat to clear the air before we stab it with our intimidating swimwear. I hope you realize how fortunate we are to get away as a family and reinvent skylines together. Time passes so quickly, and before you know it, you’ll be wrestling your own ungrateful children into bleeding edge designs.

Yes, Elizabeth, I remembered to pack the bandaids.

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