Diana Vreeland called the bikini “the most important thing since the discovery of the atomic bomb.” Between censorship and emancipation, we look back at the history of the vacation essential, which hasn’t stopped making waves since its creation almost 80 years ago.
We can’t help but thing of the staple with Vogue World: Paris on deck. After taking over Manhattan and the stage of London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane, this colorful fashion show descends upon the legendary Place Vendôme on June 23. This year’s show is all about sport and fashion. On the catwalk, we’re expecting bouncy sportswear silhouettes, with cool jogging suits, smart polo shirts, mini tennis skirts, and athletic swimsuits. And why not a few couture bikinis? 78 years after its creation, the two-piece swimsuit has lost none of its charm (or scandalous aura!) Never before in the history of fashion has a little piece of fabric caused such a stir. Let’s rewind.
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The Origin of the Bikini
Since the mid-19th century, bathing suits have been soaked in the waters of Normandy or Biarritz, cherished by the sea-bathing aristocracy. But one summer day in 1946, a Frenchman shook things up. Inspired by the first American nuclear test on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific, Louis Réard, an automotive engineer turned textile manufacturer, had the idea of dropping a bomb in post-war France. And that bomb was the bikini, named after the famous atoll.
An ultra-minimalist swimsuit, it was unveiled at the Molitor pool in Paris on the body of Casino de Paris nude dancer Micheline Bernardini—the only young woman who agreed to wear it that day. Composed of a top and a bottom patterned after the dancer’s press clippings, “the world’s smallest swimsuit” as it was called at the time, reveals her curves… and her navel. Scandalous! A respectable woman should never show this intimate part of the body in public. “In the philosophy of the body, the navel is the symbol of the umbilical cord and therefore of maternity, and at the time, this maternity should remain in the private sphere and certainly not be shown on the beach,” confirms Audrey Millet, fashion historian and author of the book The Underside of the Swimsuit: Another Story of the Body.
Marketed in a small iron cube measuring around 6cm on each side, with the slogan “Le bikini, la première bombe anatomique,” the bikini was ready to make a revolution. And among its supporters, Brigitte Bardot pulled it off best. In 1953, at the Cannes Film Festival, the 18-year-old actress drew all the photographers’ flashes, not on the red carpet, but on the beach. She was dressed simply in a little flowered bikini. A rebellious act she had already dared a year earlier in Willy Rozier’s film Manina, the Girl in the Bikini. An icon was born, and with her, the bikini. “The bikini epitomizes an entire era: that of a new freedom, of the carefree post-war years and the consumer society,” Millet says.