Itsy bitsy bikini completes 60 years of tease

[jaqod]

After having songs, films and books dedicated to it, the world's smallest piece of clothing has turned 60. Where would Brigitte Bardot, Ursula Andress and Raquel Welch be if designer Louis Reard hadn't invented the bikini? And Brian Hyland's Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini would have never seen the light of the day.

In 1946, French engineer-turned-fashion designer Louis Reard and designer Jacques Heim were competing to bring out the smallest ever swimsuit. In the times of the testing of nuclear weapons in Marshall Islands, the two were trying to come up with their own atom bomb. Heim seemed to be winning the race with his creation, Atome, which made its debut in Cannes, before Reard dropped a bombshell with his innovative swimsuit – two handkerchiefs sewn together. He named the itsy bitsy piece the 'bikini' after Bikini Atoll, where the nuclear testing was being carried out.


Not surprisingly, the next-to-nothing outfit did not go down too well with the masses or the conservatives. It wasn't easy to find a model for the scandalous outfit either. But Reard found his model in Casino de Paris' nude dancer Micheline Bernardini who was photographed in the new creation on July 5, 1946.

However, the navel-showing outfit did not catch on with even the trend-setting Hollywood thumbing it down. Of course, this was after the Vatican denounced it as 'immoral', and the governments of several European countries refused to allow their women to parade around the beaches in bikinis. The biggest problem seemed to be the display of navel, which was considered blasphemous at the time. “I can't think of any situation in the thousand years before the '60s when it was acceptable to show the navel. Reard was ahead of his time by about 15 to 20 years. Only women in the vanguard, mostly upper-class European women embraced it, just like the upper-class European women who first cast off their corsets after World War I,” said Kevin Jones, a Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising historian.

Now, it's hard to imagine a world without the bikini, given that as many of 31 per cent of 18- to 25-year-old swimwear enthusiasts prefer to don the teensy weensy pieces. From being the forbidden fruit, our favorite swimsuit has come a long way and is likely to go miles.

[Chris]

Ahh how far we've come in 60 years, now with WickedWeasel and MalibuStrings.