The two-piece swimsuit famous throughout the world is the most popular type of swimsuit with variations in both color and style, shapes that are updated every year, with bold creativity 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 swimwear that it deserved 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 comparison?
The history of this purely summer item of clothing has its roots in antiquity among the Romans, evidenced by the iconographic presence in which two-piece costumes are represented in the famous mosaics of the Roman Villa del Casale in Sicily.
For many centuries women's beach clothing was very covering and we have to get to the 1920s when Coco Chanel began to approve shorter dresses.
In 1932, the fashion designer Jacques Heim created a swimsuit much smaller than existing models, which caused a lot of hype at the time due to its small size, it is no coincidence that it was renamed the Atome advertised as "the smallest swimsuit in the world". It was a bikini, but it wasn't very successful because it was considered outrageous and indecent: even though it still covered the navel.
The official date of birth dates back to 5 July 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 film stars and daughters or wives of the captains of industry of the time, when he noticed that many of them rolled up their swimsuits as much as possible to have a better and more even tan on larger parts of the body: inspired by this observation and by Jacques Heim's imaginative invention, 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 of the time could easily be compared to the explosion of an atomic bomb! as stated by Rèard himself. Indeed, his invention was greeted with fanfare, scandal and controversy, not least because to present his first bikini to the public, Réard chose a stripper as his model.
Even in the years to come, the bikini was too daring and revealing for most women. In the first years after its debut the Bikini was rigorously opposed by the Vatican declaring it "sinful", it was then officially banned from Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium and Australia, it also remained outlawed in many American states until 1959. Things they changed when actresses and models began to wear it: among the first there was Rita Hayworth, then Brigitte Bardot, Ursula Andress in the 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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