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 Health & Beauty | August 2006 
The Bikini's Beginnings
 Associated Press
It figures: The bikini was created by men. It happened 60 years ago in — again, no surprise — France.
But it's women, and largely Hollywood stars of the 1950s, who embraced the belly-baring bathing suit and haven't let go.
A bikini is any two-piece swimsuit in which the bottom dips below the belly button. Or so says Kelly Killoren Bensimon, a model-turned-magazine editor who wrote "The Bikini Book" (Assouline, $29.95). The book aims to document the substantial significance the tiny two-piece has had on the world since Jacques Heim and Louis Reard introduced competing versions of the small suit.
Historical references to similar garments go back considerably further than 60 years ago. Women in bandeau tops and separate bottoms were depicted in ancient wall paintings dating back to 1400 BC, Killoren Bensimon reports. Burlesque and vaudeville performers wore two-piece outfits in the 1920s, and, in 1932, French designer Madeleine Vionnet offered an exposed midriff in an evening gown. Then, in 1935, American designer Claire McCardell cut out the side panels of a maillot-style (one-piece) bathing suit that's seen as the bikini's forerunner.
But when Reard presented "le bikini" at a Paris swimming pool in the summer of 1946, he couldn't even find a model to wear it.
Instead, Micheline Bernardini, a stripper-dancer, put it on — and created a global sensation.
The name "bikini" came from another historic event: The testing of atomic bombs on the Bikini atoll in the South Pacific that same summer. Killoren Bensimon says it was common during the World War II era for pop culture to borrow words from military lingo — hence, "blonde bombshell," for example.
The author proves her personal affinity with the bikini before readers even get to Chapter 1. There's a photo of the statuesque Killoren Bensimon in a brown string bikini top and skimpy bottoms held together at the hips by wide rings in the surf of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, with one of her two daughters, who also is in a bikini.
"The navel is a zone of contention," Killoren Bensimon says during a recent interview. "It's a different kind of exposure than people are used to. In the '60s, it was so sexy — everything was about the sexual revolution. In the '50s, top movie actresses wore bikinis to prove their credibility. Now an 'actor' wouldn't ever pose in a bikini."
In the 1950s, the public was seduced by the bikini, especially if Jayne Mansfield or Brigitte Bardot was in it. Bardot tested how low a bikini could go, Killoren Bensimon says, and it turns out it can go so low that the bathing suit looks more like a strip of fabric no more than a few inches wide. Such a tiny garment made sense for all those sunbathers on the French Riviera.
Even now, the fashion set boasts of packing "a wardrobe of bikinis and just a few things to throw over them" for their glamorous vacations in the Caribbean, notes Valerie Steele, director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan.
"So much of fashion is about showing off your body. Clothes are the frame to show off the perfect you. Bikinis are pretty demanding that way," she adds.
Movies have been an important part of the bikini's history — and they continue that role today. Aside from Bardot's "And God Created Woman," bikini images burned into our minds include Ursula Andress in "Dr. No" and Halle Berry, who re-created that look 40 years later in another James Bond flick, "Die Another Day." Then came the Sports Illustrated swimsuit covers — and later swimsuit issues — and Cheryl Tiegs posters.
In '74, Lycra was introduced in bikinis and that held you in more. "It makes bikinis approachable," Steele says. "There are so many choices. If you need a bigger top, you get a smaller bottom. If you need a bigger bottom, you get a smaller top. You make it your own."
Behind the curves
Named in 1946 for the Bikini Atoll of the Marshal Islands in the Pacific Ocean, where the U.S. Army was performing nuclear tests, the bikini and its variations prove it's still the bomb on the beach.
1946: French mechanical engineer Louis Reard and fashion designer Jacques Heim claim to be the first to launch the bikini on the French Riviera
1950s: Pinups showed women wearing ultrafeminine, modest twopiece swimsuits
1959: Swimsuit manufacturer Cole of California introduced its first mass-produced bikini
1960: Song "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" was released
1962: Ursula Andress was seen in a white bikini in the James Bond movie "Dr. No."
1963: Mouseketeer Annette Funicello wore a bikini in "Beach Party"
1964: The Vatican banned bikinis in Catholic countries / Sports Illustrated revealed its first swimsuit edition
Early 1970s: Bikini swimwear fabrics such as velvet, leather and crocheted squares surface
1974: Lycra was introduced in bikinis for support and a revealing silhouette
1996: Linda Hanley wore the bikini that was made the official uniform of the Olympic beach volleyball Team
2002: Halle Berry appeared in the James Bond movie "Die Another Day" wearing a familiar bikini |
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