Bikini turns 64

[RyderKnightley]

Today (5th July) in 1946 Louis Reard, a French automobile engineer, introduced the bikini to the world. He once stated that a bikini was not a bikini "unless it could be pulled through a wedding ring".
It was seen as daring because it showed off the navel, which was a bit of a taboo in the West at the time and indeed he could not persuade any models to wear it for its unveiling. He had to use an 'exotic dancer', Micheline Bernadini, as his model. As a further measure of its controversy, it took almost a decade before it became accepted in the USA.

1946 Bikini


Bikini today

I guess that counts as a bikini as it can be pulled through a wedding ring.

Happy birthday to the bikini for giving me many years of visual pleasure.

[RyderKnightley]

Around the same time another Frenchman, Jacques Heim, introduced another two piece swimsuit, which he called the "Atome". This was nothing to do with the bomb, but because the atom was the smallest element known at the time. Depending on which source you read, Heim unveiled his creation about a month earlier and that it failed to catch on, or at the same time as Reard introduced the bikini and was just pipped at the post to be remembered by history while other sources say Heim's Atome was as late as the fifties. If so there would have to be some major differences between the Atome and the Bikini. I have been unable to locate any pictures of the Heim creation.

However, here is a bikini from the seventies.

[RyderKnightley]

The bikini of the 80's.