Murals on the walls of archeological excavations show Roman women working out in two- piece outfits. These outfits went out of style after the fall of the decadent Roman Empire. It took more than 1,700 years for European females to get back to that look. On July 5, 1946, Paris designer Louis Reard caused a sensation when he showed off his two piece swim suit at a popular swimming pool. The suit was so scandalous that no model would wear it in public. He had to get a showgirl who danced in the nude to do it. 19-year-old Micheline Bernardini didn’t mind the possible shame. She donned the skimpy outfit and proudly showed off her navel! Shocking! The suit had a bra-like top and a bottom of two inverted triangles connected by a string. When asked what he called it, Reard proclaimed it the “bikini”. Five days earlier, newspapers ran articles about atomic bomb testing at the Bikini atoll in the Pacific. Reard took the name from that. (I guess he figured his creation was da bomb. Sorry.) He described his creation as the ‘smaller than the world’s smallest bathing suit”. Those same newspapers eagerly published articles and pictures of the bikini. Bernardini got more than 50,000 fan letters.
The bikini was not the first two-piece bathing suit of the 20th Century. But it was the first to bare the belly button. It took a while for the daring suit to catch on. The Catholic Church warned it was sinful. In 1951, the first Miss World pageant had contestants wearing bikinis. The outcry from prudes got it banned from future beauty pageants. However, in 1953, French sex symbol Brigette Bardot wore it to the beach at Cannes. Even though Pope Pius XII condemned it, the bikini had turned the corner. Soon other celebrities were photographed wearing it. It took a while for Americans to catch the fever. Americans have always been more conservative about the human body than Europeans. The first Barbie wore a modest one-piece suit in 1959. In 1960, the bikini got a huge boost from a novelty song. Bobby Hyland had a big hit with “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini”. And then the beach blanket movies, starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon, came out. The Sexual Revolution made the bikini one of its symbols.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/bikini-introduced
https://www.thegoodtrade.com/features/history-of-the-bikini/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_bikini
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