The first bikini, according to popular culture at least, was launched in Paris during the summer of 1946. Designed by Parisian Louis RÈard, the first bikini was unveiled at a July fashion show – the only woman courageous enough to model the suit for RÈard was Micheline Bernardini, a nude dancer at the Casino de Paris. RÈard’s design was loosely based on Jacques Heim’s suit, the atome, which had been released earlier in the year. RÈard had, as he put it “split the atome” and come up with an even smaller suit – the bikini modelled by Bernardini was a string bikini, the smallest suit in modern memory.
As with many things in fashion, the bikini of 1946 was hardly new news. Looking back through time, one will find scores of paintings and drawings depicting women in remarkably similar suits – even in the 1930s, women in films were spotted wearing what anyone today would consider a bikini suit. The difference between those and RÈard’s creation was simple: marketing. RÈard’s bikini was named for the nuclear testing carried out in the south Pacific around the time of his suit’s debut. And though the launch of RÈard’s bikini created more of a ripple than a tsunami, it was only a few short years before the bikini craze captured the imagination of designers and ladies in the world’s most fashionable cities – even in conservative America.
The bikini appeared in a number of high profile places – notably on Brigitte Bardot in 1957’s ‘And God Created Woman’, on Ursula Andress in 1962’s ‘Dr No’ and then in a series of ‘Beach Party’ films, staring all-American sweetheart Annette Funicello. The song ‘Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini’ is credited with catapulting the suit to immortality in the early 1960s, and when played in season, is said to reliably drive women to the tills with a new bikini in hand.
© Summer Bikinis.co.uk 2007