Surfing the Nation. Surf-lifestyle t-shirts and representations of Australian cultural identity

The essay aims to explore the ways an all-Australian surf lifestyle brand, Mambo, conveys the images and the representations of Australianness through its t-shirts and products in general. Essentially, Mambo is a Sydney based surf-wear label that specializes in bright t-shirts. Created in 1984, in less than a decade the label was generating an annual turnover of more than $10 million. While a Mambo montage might feature the conventional signifiers of Australian culture – like the beach, thongs, sprinklers, and Holdens – it is almost invariably underlined with a sharp satirical bite. The Mambo designers are generally obsessed with something that derives from, or connects with, the Australian experience. Also, Mambo has taken Australia’s blunt approach to life and glorified it, in pure surfing subculture style. The essay tries to understand how the different signifiers of Australian cultural identity conveyed by Mambo products are produced and reproduced, ready to be received by both a national and a global community of surfers/consumers, also trying to explore how these ironical markers of Australianness represent a narrative of the different meanings of “being Australian”.