The world-famous two-piece swimsuit is the most popular type of swimsuit, with variations in both color and style, with shapes that are updated every year, with bold flair and prices for all budgets, constituting a “must have” for every self-respecting summer.
But why the name bikini? Was it really so disruptive in the world of women's beachwear to deserve the name "Bikini" from the atoll of the same name where the explosion of an atomic bomb was tested by the United States of America in July 1946? Why this combination?
The history of this typically summery garment has its roots in ancient Roman times, as demonstrated by the iconographic presence of two-piece swimsuits in the famous mosaics of the Roman Villa del Casale in Sicily.
For many centuries, women's beachwear was very covering and we have to wait until the 1920s when Coco Chanel began to popularize shorter dresses.
In 1932, fashion designer Jacques Heim created a swimsuit much smaller than existing models, which at the time caused quite a stir due to its small size, not surprisingly it was nicknamed the Atome and advertised as "the smallest swimsuit in the world". It was a bikini, but it was not very successful because it was considered outrageous and indecent: despite still covering the navel.
The official birth date dates back to July 5, 1946 when Louis Réard , not a stylist or fashion designer, but an engineer in the automotive sector, had a brilliant intuition. He was on the beaches of Saint Tropez frequented by movie stars and daughters or wives of the captains of industry of the time, when he noticed that many of them rolled up their bathing suits as much as possible to have a better and more even tan on larger parts of the body: inspired by this observation and the whimsical invention of Jacques Heim, he decided to dare more and design a costume that revealed the navel. Thus was born the first Bikini, which owes its name to the Bikini Islands.
The introduction of the bikini into women's fashion at the time could easily be compared to the explosion of an atomic bomb! as stated by Réard himself. In fact, his invention was greeted with clamor, scandal and controversy, also because to present his first bikini to the public, Réard chose a stripper as a model.
Even in the years to come, the Bikini was still too daring and skimpy for most women. In the first years after its debut, the Bikini was rigorously opposed by the Vatican, declaring it “sinful”, and was then officially banned by Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium and Australia, and remained illegal in many American states until 1959. Things changed when actresses and models began to wear it: among the first there was Rita Hayworth, then Brigitte Bardot, Ursula Andress in a Bond girl version.
In the 1960s, the two-piece swimsuit became a symbol of the sexual revolution of those years and in 1967 Time wrote that 65% of girls on the beach were now wearing a bikini.
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