Inspiring Conversations with Sibylle Postley of Pepper Swimwear

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sibylle Postley.

Hi Sibylle, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Pepper Swimwear started with two friends, a shared love of beach volleyball, and a slightly crazy idea that we could make a better bikini!

My co-founder, Bridget Dome, and I met through volleyball. We were both young mothers, playing beach volleyball several times a week in Santa Monica, and constantly complaining about our bikinis. The cute ones didn’t stay put, the athletic ones weren’t particularly flattering, and even our favorites often fell apart after a few months of playing in the sand. Between the two of us, we had accumulated hundreds of bikini pieces in our search for the perfect suit.

Eventually, with Bridget as the driving force, we decided to stop complaining and make our own.

We came from very different backgrounds. Bridget grew up in California, studied art history, worked as a personal shopper to the stars, and had a background in event marketing. A true style maven with an impeccable eye for fashion, Bridget is always effortlessly chic and beautifully dressed. She brought that same creativity and sense of style to Pepper.

I grew up in Austria, earned degrees in finance and international business, and went on to build a career in management consulting. While my professional path took me into the business world, I’d always had a creative side and a love for fashion and design. As a child, I loved spending time in the sewing studio of one of my late mother’s best friends. One of my favorite memories is wandering around with a magnet, collecting pins that had fallen onto the floor. Later, I completed two years of fashion design and sewing training at a vocational high school and even made my own ball gowns as a teenager.

Neither of us had worked professionally in the apparel industry, but we shared an entrepreneurial spirit, a love of design, and a very clear idea of what we wanted from a bikini.

We were also incredibly fortunate to have help from our friend Jaymi Washburn, a talented fashion designer and entrepreneur whose husband is a fellow beach volleyball player. Jaymi generously shared her expertise, introduced us to apparel development and manufacturing, and helped us turn our idea into reality.

We started developing Pepper in 2013 and officially launched in 2014. Bridget came up with the name Pepper, which couldn’t have been more perfect. It comes from “peppering,” a common volleyball warm-up drill, but also captures the spirit of the brand: a little spicy, playful, energetic, and fun.

Our first designs turned out to be considerably harder to produce than we anticipated! After working with professional sample makers and getting frustrated with how expensive and time-consuming little changes were, I pulled out my sewing machine and began making prototypes myself. Bridget and I collaborated on the designs, tested every iteration on the volleyball court, and kept refining them until we loved them.

From the beginning, Pepper has been rooted in our beach volleyball community. Our inspiration and unofficial product-development team has always been a wonderful group of women we affectionately call “The Mamas.” They’re strong, funny, athletic, supportive women of different ages and backgrounds who share a love for the beach and each other.

Our models over the years have been fellow volleyball players we know and admire. We love celebrating real women who are passionate about their sport and comfortable in their own skin.

Along the way, Pepper has grown from something we originally created for ourselves and our friends into a brand worn by women around the world, from recreational beach volleyball players and surfers to professional athletes and Olympians.

Looking back, what I treasure most isn’t just the swimwear we’ve created, but the friendships, experiences, and community that have grown around it. Pepper began with a simple idea, and it’s been wonderful to see how far that idea could take us.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Ha! Not even close. But it has certainly been an adventure.

When Bridget and I started Pepper, we had plenty of creativity, enthusiasm, and determination, but very little experience in the business of apparel manufacturing. We assumed that if we had a great design, we could simply find someone to manufacture it. We quickly discovered how complicated even a seemingly simple bikini can be!

I still remember how we spent months developing one of our earliest tops, going through multiple expensive rounds of samples before realizing that the design simply wasn’t working the way we’d envisioned. We had to be willing to walk away from ideas we loved if they didn’t deliver the comfort and performance we wanted.

That became one of our biggest lessons: a great product isn’t just about how it looks. It’s about how it makes you feel and how it performs in real life.

Manufacturing has been another ongoing challenge. We’ve made a conscious effort to produce locally in Los Angeles, in relatively small quantities, while maintaining high standards for quality and construction. That isn’t the cheapest or easiest way to compete in an industry dominated by mass production and fast fashion.

There are so many details that consumers never see—the tension of the elastic, the stretch and recovery of the fabric, how a seam sits against the skin, or whether a bikini stays in place when someone dives for a volleyball. Getting those things right takes time, experience, and a willingness to keep improving.

Like many independent businesses, we’ve also faced the challenge of balancing creative ambitions with financial realities. Developing beautiful products is one thing; building the marketing, distribution, and operational infrastructure to scale a business is something else entirely. We’ve always been a small, hands-on operation, and competing for attention against companies with enormous marketing budgets isn’t easy.

Pepper has taught me to be resourceful, trust my instincts, value relationships, and recognize that success isn’t always measured by the size of a company. Sometimes the most valuable things you build are the knowledge, friendships, and experiences you gain along the way.

And then, of course, there are life’s challenges that put everything else into perspective.

In 2025, I lost my 13-year-old daughter. It’s been an incredibly difficult journey, and I’m deeply grateful to have Pepper as both a creative outlet and a meaningful occupation. Being able to immerse myself in designing, creating, and working with my hands has given me moments of focus, purpose, and even joy during a very painful time.

As you know, we’re big fans of Pepper Swimwear. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Pepper Swimwear is a women-founded, California-based swimwear brand specializing in stylish, high-performance bikinis designed for women who love an active beach lifestyle.

Our philosophy is simple: you shouldn’t have to choose between looking great and feeling comfortable and secure. We create bikinis that are flattering, playful, and feminine, but can also withstand the demands of competitive beach volleyball, surfing, swimming, and just about any other beach adventure.

What sets Pepper apart is our attention to fit, function, and quality. We’re pretty obsessive about the little details, from the softness and durability of our fabrics to the tension of our elastics and the placement of every seam. A bikini should move with your body, stay where it belongs, and make you feel confident enough to forget you’re even wearing it.

All our bikinis are reversible, allowing women to mix and match different colors and prints to create multiple looks with just a few pieces. We also offer different coverage options, from cheeky to modest, because we know that feeling comfortable and confident means something different to everyone.

Another aspect of Pepper that we really love is creating our own original prints. We’ve always gravitated toward vibrant, energetic colors and playful designs that capture the spirit of beach life. We put a lot of thought into developing unique prints that coordinate beautifully with our solid colors, giving women endless possibilities to mix and match and express their own style.

One of my personal favorites is our signature “Pepper Print,” which is actually a creative collage of photographs taken at some of our favorite beaches where we play volleyball (I’ve included a photo of this print). I love that there’s a little piece of our own beach adventures woven into the fabric. It makes the design especially meaningful to us and is a wonderful example of how personal our creative process has always been.

We’re also proud to have manufactured our swimwear in Los Angeles for nearly 12 years, producing in small batches and working closely with skilled local craftspeople. We’ve also partnered with a carefully selected, ethical manufacturer in Bali, owned by our friend Jaymi on two occasions.

Rather than chasing fast-fashion trends, we focus on creating high-quality pieces that women will love wearing season after season. In fact, my husband likes to joke that we make our bikinis a little *too* well — maybe if they didn’t last quite so long, our customers would have to come back for new ones more often!

We’re a small business, and that personal connection matters to us. We love hearing from our customers, helping them find the right fit, and seeing where their Pepper bikinis take them. Whether someone is competing on the volleyball court, catching waves, or simply enjoying a day at the beach, we want them to feel beautiful, strong, comfortable, and free to be themselves.

After all, life is too short to spend it adjusting your bikini!

What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
What I love most about Los Angeles is its incredible diversity, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit. And, of course, the fact that I can play beach volleyball outdoors almost every day of the year!

Having grown up in Austria, I never take the Southern California lifestyle for granted. The beaches, sunshine, and outdoor culture have been such an important part of my life, and the beach volleyball community has given me some of my closest friendships.

I also absolutely love the city’s creative and manufacturing communities.

For almost 12 years, producing swimwear locally has taken us on countless adventures through different Los Angeles neighborhoods, visiting fabric vendors, cutters, specialty workshops, and sewing factories.

Those trips have always been about more than business. We make a point of stopping at local fruit stands or taco stands, exploring little shops, and discovering corners of the city we might otherwise never visit. Some of my favorite LA experiences have happened on what started out as a simple trip to pick up fabric or check on production.

It’s given me a wonderful appreciation for the incredibly hardworking, talented, and diverse people who make things in this city.

What do I like least? The traffic, naturally!

But more seriously, I worry about how expensive Los Angeles has become, especially for the small businesses, artists, craftspeople, and independent manufacturers who contribute so much to its character.

I would hate to see the city lose the creative diversity and entrepreneurial energy that make it so special.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.pepperswimwear.com
• Instagram: @pepperswimwearla