Into the bleu: Tane Bowden shares how he prepares for the perfect wave (and night)
Free surfer and model Tane Bowden has a simple philosophy: be like water, go with the flow and do it wearing the new Bleu de Chanel L'Excusif
IF THE SKIES SEEM A LITTLE BLUER, the water a little clearer and the city a little more fragrant it’s not just because spring has arrived. You can thank Chanel for that additional joie de vivre in the air, courtesy of the newly launched Bleu de Chanel L’Exclusif, which took place at the Vault, an underground venue on Sydney’s Clarence Street that lit up the city “bleu” for the evening.
Before the event kicked off, Esquire Australia spoke with free surfer and model Tane Bowden to learn about how he gets ready. Not just for a night with Chanel, that’s the easy part. But how he prepares himself for life at large. Ahead of hitting the water; before starting the day. And how this has been an evolution of becoming who he is today.
Water has a rhythm to it that can teach us the valuable lesson of when to resist, when to let go and when to simply just drift. It also never forms the same shape twice, becoming something new with every wave and every rip. To step into it is to surrender to something bigger than you, and to find freedom in it. For Bowden, this is the biggest lesson, one applied to both surfing and life: the ability to flow into change, to evolve without fear of where the tide carries you.
It was what led Bowden to leave a promising comp career in the waves and swap it for free surfing.
“Back in the day, when I was competitive surfing, it was very much [like] you had to be focused and on,” he says. “At times, I almost felt like I was becoming a bit of a robot.” The structure of professional heats demanded that he shape himself to the expectations of judges. Over time, that discipline dulled the thing that first drew him into the ocean.
“Even when I first started surfing, it was about how much it brought me in the moment. It was almost like a meditation in itself,” he recalls.
Leaving the tour was an act of realising the kind of person he wanted to become. “Losing the love for surfing along the way was not a part of the plan, but that kind of opened me up to realise that life is never always how it’s going to be right now,” he says.
Free surfing, however, offered something more truthful: an art form rather than a sport, a way to express how he feels on any given day. Some days that means charging heavy waves with Rage Against the Machine blasting in his ears; others it’s gliding through smaller swells with nothing but his own rhythm to follow.
That same fluidity runs through his daily rituals. Mornings begin with gratitude. “I’ve been practicing having gratitude as my first sort of thought and trying to filter in positive thoughts,” he says. Then comes a cold shower. No warm-up, no hesitation.
“I’m straight cold and just stay with cold,” Bowden laughs. “It definitely makes me alert every day”.
A short meditation follows, fifteen minutes to clear the clutter of to-do lists and focus on being present. “Instead of worry about what’s going to happen in the future, be relaxed and excited for what’s going to happen and just flow into it”.
Saltwater isn’t kind to skin, something he learned early on. “I never really had a skincare routine until I started modelling when I was about 18 . . . but now I’ve got a full-blown skincare routine and I am coming out with my own skincare product as well”.
These days it’s simple but consistent: cleanse, SPF, and repeat at night with a double cleanse. It’s a practice grounded in care rather than vanity, a way of protecting himself against years spent under the sun.
Fragrance has become part of that process for Bowden, too. “What I actually do is use Allure Homme Sport before I go to the gym, and now it’s Bleu de Chanel L’Exclusif for when I’m going out or going to a dinner.
“It makes me feel confident pretty much straight away. My shoulders have been pulled back because of that elegant sort of scent.”
There’s a parallel here between his embrace of fragrance and his philosophy of surfing. Both are about presence, the way small rituals change how you carry yourself in the world.
“It almost feels like that freshness of opening your doors in the morning and having a big gust of wind from the salty ocean,” he says of the scent.
For Bowden, water has always been the vehicle to a better understanding the kind of person he was becoming. And a recognition that we are never finished, always adapting. “It resonates with me from even at a very young age of growing up in a bus, travelling all over the place like a gypsy, not knowing what’s around the corner or what life is going to throw at me . . . to now bringing it back to the early days and living and the mindset that free surfing and life itself is such a in the moment, spontaneous, adventurous thing that I can create and kind of do whatever the fuck I want. It’s a sense of freedom.”
In other words, to live like water: surrender, flow, and become something else.
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