HISTORY OF THE BIKINI : DIFFICULT TIMES IN THE "FIFTIES"...

The bikini emerged as a cultural icon at the end of the 1960s; however, prior to this period, it was not widely accepted.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the fashion for women's clothing did not evolve significantly. Women's bodies remained concealed from the neck to the ankles. This was also true for swimsuits, which were made of heavy fabrics and were not very comfortable when wet.

After the First World War, in the 1920s, societal morals were liberated. This marked the beginning of women's emancipation, which significantly impacted women's bathing costumes. Gradually, the sleeves became shorter, the legs were exposed, and the neckline began to lower modestly before eventually becoming more revealing.

The fabrics used in the production of one-piece swimsuits have evolved over time. Initially made from wool, which was uncomfortable and impractical, swimsuits began to incorporate synthetic fibers such as rayon in the 1920s. Rayon, a semi-synthetic fiber, is significantly lighter, more breathable, and offers better water resistance compared to wool.

Almost simultaneously, lastex emerged to revolutionize the swimwear worn by women. This elastic synthetic rubber thread enabled the creation of more refined, fitted, tighter, and practical designs in the 1930s. These swimsuits often featured lower necklines and sometimes even belts to accentuate the silhouette.

However, their use remains marginal compared to the woolen uniform, which still largely predominates.

In 1935, the first modern two-piece swimsuit was introduced, featuring a mid-rise top and a high-waisted bottom. This design, considered very daring for its time, marked a significant milestone in the evolution of swimwear and paved the way for the iconic bikini, created in France by Louis Réard in 1946.

The first bikini is a bold and revolutionary two-piece swimsuit that forever changed the landscape of swimwear design. Its minimalist design represented a radical departure from the modesty and conservatism of the time. Consisting of a bra-like top and panties, the bikini was designed to be form-fitting and liberating, accentuating the natural contours of the female body.

On July 5, 1946, at the Molitor swimming pool in Paris, Réard could not find any model willing to present his new invention to the public. Only the famous nude dancer, Micheline Bernardini, volunteered to dare to wear this revolutionary two-piece that was too avant-garde for the morality of the time.

Réard's presentation went largely unnoticed, except by the Vatican's religious authorities in Rome, who condemned and banned the bikini in 1947.

Indeed, the bikini is considered scandalous, and wearing it is perceived as immoral, indecent, and vulgar.

Subsequently, throughout the 1950s, the bikini became a more acceptable garment, especially due to star actresses such as Brigitte Bardot, Jayne Mansfield (photo), Marilyn Monroe, and Diana Dors, who wore it in films or at film festivals in Cannes or Venice. Even British Princess Margaret, photographed on a yacht in 1950 on the outskirts of the Costa del Sol, helped to make the bikini better known.

During the 1950s, swimwear models became more varied, featuring high-waisted bottoms and different styles of tops, such as halter tops and bandeaux. However, the one-piece swimsuit remained far more popular and best-selling, with more flattering cuts. The use of stretchy and elastic materials like lycra and nylon became more common, improving fit and comfort.

However, the wearing of bikinis on public beaches remained forbidden during those years, with the exception of the Mediterranean beaches in the south of France, and in Spain where, In order not to harm tourism, Franco's (photo) fascist regime surprisingly allowed women to wear the two small triangles of fabric that make up this kind of swimsuit.

The bikini was banned in Germany until 1970. However, in other regions, particularly in America, the rise of private swimming pools in the 1960s provided many women with the opportunity to wear this type of swimsuit without the scrutiny of onlookers.

Other reasons delayed the popular adoption of this piece of clothing. In politics, in France, communist thought "embarks" the bikini in the class struggle, due to its very high price, making it accessible only to the wealthy upper bourgeois class.

Feminists, on the other hand, oppose the bikini because, according to them, it reduces those who wear it to the status of an object, or objects of sexual desire.

Fashion magazines such as "Elle," Marie Claire, and Vogue were not particularly enamored with the bikini at this time, until the latter magazine declared it the "garment of the season" in 1959, having scorned it eight years earlier.

There was also a form of self-censorship in the sense that bikinis were deemed appropriate only for young women or teenage girls who conformed to beauty standards, namely: slim, without physical defects, and especially "without a big belly".

It referred to a kind of stereotype, a form of discrimination against imperfect, even unsightly bodies. Perhaps a legacy of the pin-up girls and the beautiful movie stars who made the bikini famous in the 1950s.

It was not until the women's liberation movements and the sexual revolution of the 1960s that the bikini became a staple of popular fashion and conquered beaches worldwide.

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A MONTH AFTER GINA LOLLOBRIGIDA, ANOTHER FAMOUS BIKINI GIRL, RAQUEL WELCH, PASSED AWAY.

By 1966, bikini was becoming increasingly popular, especially among young women, in Western countries.  This two-piece bathing suit was not the very minimalist one that had caused a scandal on the almost totally naked body of stripper Micheline Bernardini, in Paris, on July 5, 1946.  This was shortly after the creation of the tiny bikini by the French engineer Louis Réard.

In the early 1950s, only pin-up girls (or a few other women who sometimes received police fines for indecency on public beaches) most of them movie stars, such as Brigitte Bardot, Gina Lollobrigida, Esther Williams, Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe, dared to appear in this very light outfit.

But for ordinary mortals, to appear in public, with so few clothes, was simply indecent, at least, for the mores of the time.

In the early 1960s, the American actress and signer Annette Funicello (brown hair girl on the photo above) will create the fashion of the Beach Party, in a series of movies around this theme.  Already a recognized artist thanks, among other things, to her roles in Disney studio productions, she is recommended by the producers to wear sober bathing suits, one-pieces, or, at least, not-too-revealing two-pieces that do not show her navel.

Because, for a woman, showing her navel was considered indecent, still, in puritanical America, at that time.

In 1963, from the first of this series of Beach Party films, that will be very popular, young people will imitate this kind of activity in their everyday life, obviously also wearing the famous bikini.

A little while before, in 1962, in a dazzling scene from the movie "Dr No", the famous Bond Girl Ursula Andress (photo), coming out of the sea with her splendid white bikini, had entered history, not only of cinema, but as a beauty icon who greatly contributed to the brand image of the bikini.

In 1966, Raquel Welch did the same by emerging from the water wearing a partially torn bikini, made of animal skin and fur, in the film "One Million Years B.C.".  The movie, almost totally silent, is a failure, and all Raquel Welch hopes is that it quickly sinks into oblivion, so that it does not damage her career, which is still in its infancy.

If this film, in which she says only three lines, is a failure, its promotional posters will be a phenomenal publicity stunt for Raquel Welch.  She appears in the foreground, dressed in her original cave woman bikini.  The sales sucesses of this poster are instant and overwhelming.  They break records and are distributed all over the planet. 

 

Overnight, thanks to this poster that testifies to her extreme beauty, Raquel Welch achieves worldwide fame, and she becomes a sex symbol, of which all moviegoers dream.  Every magazine wants photos of her, and she becomes an actress and a top model much sought after by film directors and fashion designers.  It is a total surprise for this young woman born in 1940, in Chicago, of an American mother, and a father of Bolivian origin.  

In her memoir (Raquel : Beyond the Cleavage, 2010) Welch wrote : "I was not brought up to be a sex symbol, nor is it in my nature to be one" (...) "The fact that I became one is probably the loveliest, most glamorous and fortunate misunderstanding".

Just before One Million Years B.C., Welch had the first success of her career thanks to her role in the sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage.  Previously, she had played small roles (including one, in 1964, in the film Roustabout starring Elvis Presley).  As was the case for Marilyn Monroe and Gina Lollobrigida, film producers confined Raquel Welch to many superficial roles, betting only on the beauty of her body.  Like her two famous colleagues, she will always protest against this categorazation of "woman object". 

 

Curiously, Welch, every man's sexual fantasy,  first owes her breakthrough in the Hollywood film industry (in 1965) to... a woman, the wife of producer Saul David, who, after seeing a magnificent photo of Raquel in Life magazine, sees great potential in her, and points it out to her husband.

David recommended Welch to a contract with 20th Century Fox.  She agreed to a lucrative seven-year contract, for five pictures over the next five years.  Almost forty other films will follow, as well as fifty television shows, making Raquel Welch a legend.

Her curves and beauty captured pop culture attention.  Playboy crowned her the "most desired woman" of the '70s, despite the fact that she never appeared completely naked in the magazine.  In 1995, she was named one of the 100 sexiest stars in film History.  The year after, she received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  And in 2013, Welch nabbed the No. 2 spot (behind only Jennifer Aniston) on Men's Health's "Hottest Women of All Time" list.

The film and television industry had finally rewarded her talents as an actress, singer and dancer by awarding her a Golden Globe for her role as Constance Bonacieux in the fil "The Three Musketeers (1973, photo).  She was nominated for this award, in 1988, thanks to her excellent performance in the television film "Right to Die".

Her remarkable career spanned five decades.  Unlike Gina Lollobrigida, who became an actress by chance, to pay for her studies at the School of Fine Arts of Rome (she wanted to become a painter), Raquel Welch became an actress by training.

In 1942, to serve his country's war efforts, her father, an aeronautical engineer, moved his family to La Jolia, California.  Very early, the one who then bears the name of Jo-Raquel Tejada, will want to become an artist of show business.  She took classes un dance, singing and acting.  

Already, at 14 years old, aware of her advantageous physique, she won beauty contests, and she soon landed a few modeling contracts.  Funny enough, after seven years of ballet lessons, seeing how much her feminine attributes have grown, her instructor makes her give up a career in this field, telling her right away that she really does not have the physique of the job !

For posterity, Raquel Welch holds a very high place in the Pantheon of female beauty of all time.  This stunning and breathaking beauty, and her glorious acting and modeling careers will ensure that she will never be forgotten.  Even if she died last Wednesday, at the age of 82, she will remain, in a way, immortal...  And one of the most famous bikini girl of all time !

Here is an audio-visual montage that attests to her legendary iconic beauty.

HISTORY OF THE BIKINI : BRIGITTE BARDOT AND THE PIN UP GIRLS OF THE 1950s

Brigitte Bardot

In 1946, two Frenchmen, engineer Louis Réard, and fashion designer Jacques Heim, were in a strange competition in Paris.

The challenge : make the smallest two-piece bathing suit for women...

But, given the mores of the time, an obstacle stands in this race with minimal dress : the navel !  In the 1940s, showing it was still considered obscene or forbidden.

In fact, many historians consider that Heim already won this race to the tiniest swimsuit in 1932, by creating his prototype called "The Atom" (pictured above).It was a two-piece somewhat similar to the model that will take the name "bikini" after World War II.

What inspired Louis Réard for his own version of the minimalist swimsuit was a phenomenon he had observed on the French beaches of that time.  He had noticed that, in order to get a better tan, some women rolled the edges of their two-pice bathing suit, surreptitiously discovering their "scandalous" navel !

In his engineering head, Réard (pictured above) understood that this need for women to shorten their own bathing suits by rolling the edges, should lead to an adjustment in the making of the garment.

After all, like many scientific inventions, this is how the bikini was born.  First, the observation of a problem, a need, a desire, or a questionable fact.  Then, the imagination gets to work to find a solution.  This solution then takes shape on the drawing board.  And it is carried out with material means and a skin-fine that proceeds by trial and error.

Thus, in 1946, with more or less accuracy, Réard developed the bikini we know today : a top covering most of the breasts; a stocking, with a triangle at the front to hide the inner part, and at the back enough fabrics to cover more or less half of the buttocks.

Once his invention was made, Louis Réard planned to sell it, as he was also a businessman operating his mother's lingerie shop near the Folies Bergères in Paris.  In order to attrack customers or buyers of his new product, the engineer had to show case it, market it and advertise it.

To do this, Réard was looking for a mannequin -an alive one- to make demonstrations in public.  But his bikini was so daring for the manners of the time, that no one wanted to wear it.

Running out of volunteers, Réard takes great measures.  To present his creation to the world, he hires a nude dancer from the Casino de Paris, Micheline Bernardini (pictured above).

On July 5, 1946, she caused a sensation by appearing, almost completely naked, at the Molitor Pool, in front of the public and photographers, in Réard's minimalist bathing suit !  An instant star, Bernardini has a multitude of admirers, especially among men.  In the days following her audacious presentation, she received no less than 50 000 letters !

But Louis Réard is too far ahead of his time.  His bikini is scandalous and he can't sell it.  Worse, his competitor, Jacques Heim, was more successful in selling a more conservative two-piece bathing suit (like the one pictured above), revealing less of the female anatomy.  However, the clientele remains quite marginal.  It is limited to a small number of wealthy and sophisticated Higher-class Europeans.

Esther Williams

For the bikini to return to store shelves, it will take a bang.  And it is a young woman, many considered the most beautiful in the world, who will give this momentum, so desired by Réard, to take off and boost the sales of his invention hitherto sullied by the ordinary people.

Indeed, at the Cannes Film Festival, in 1953, the blonde and very beautiful French actress Brigitte Bardot dazzled the world by posing in a very sexy bikini.  Bardot launched a fashion that then spread to the adjacent beaches of Saint-Tropez, a town on the French Riviera that quickly became the bikini capital of the world.

Ava Gardner

Other movie and show business stars and pin-up girls will emulate Bardot in the 1950s.  These resplendent and illustrious fans of the new bikini include : Esther Williams, Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe, Anita Ekberg and Sophia Loren.

Marilyn Monroe

But, in several American states, or European countries (such as Italy, Spain and Portugal, the bikini is banned.  Wearing it is illegal.  Violators can be fined.  The Pope also condemns the wearing of the bikini.

Sophia Loren

And if, as we approach the 1960s, some magazines or newspapers are showing people in bikinis, these pictures are retouched or censored so that readers can't look at this outrageous navel that no one should see !

Here are some photos of bikini models of the 1950s on a grestest hit of the year 1953 : «Look at that Girl», by Guy Mitchell !

INVENTION OF THE "NEW" BIKINI : NOT UNLIKE SOME GREAT DISCOVERIES OF THE PAST.

In my first post, we saw that two-piece bikini-like garments were worn by women for athletic purposes in Ancient Greece, as far back as 1 400 BC.  It seemed like a natural thing that, even in these times : design followed function.  But it was not as simple as that.  You know the adage : other times, other morals.  What seems natural in some societies is often inadmissible or licentious in others, even in our world that we call the "global village".  The way different peoples see things depends of who (political authorities, interest group, etc) has the power to rule the society.

In occidental countries, the Catholic Church had such a powerful influence up until the middle of the last century, that it could determine what was right and what was wrong.  Kings, dictators, or even democratic leaders could not govern without the advices or the rules imposed by the religious authorities.  In the fist two millenniums of our era, as a citizen or an inhabitant of a christian country, you were not allowed to do or say something that the priests and the Pope would condemn.  They hold the truth and nobody could challenge them on almost any question even for matters, like those related to sciences, they did not have the competence to understand or judge.  They would even threaten, imprison, torture or kill people who did'nt agree with them on some conflicting issues.

For examples, great discoverers like Copernicus and Galileo were forced by the Church to deny their brilliant theories about the earth, because these findings went against the dogmatic views or the superstitions of the christian religion.  Galileo was found guilty of heresy even if he provided evidence for his heliocentric theory by using a telescope.  Later, when Charles Darwin elaborated his theory of the evolution, it was impossible for the Catholic Church to accept that we "were all apes".  It was in complete contradiction of the "official story" told in the Genesis (first book of the Old Testament).

Of course, we can not compare the invention of the "modern bikini" to the great discoveries made by Copernicus, Galileo or Darwin.  But the creation of this new bathing suit in 1946 had a shocking impact too.  And, for the religious authorities, it was a unacceptable scandal !  A monster of indecency !  In many countries, not long after his invention, the bikini was condemned and banned.  His inventor, French engineer Louis Réard (1897-1984), knew that his new creation would be a "bomb" !  That's the reason why he named it after Bikini Atoll, in the Pacific, the site of an atomic bomb test on July 1, 1946.  And, compared to the beachwears of the first 30 years of the century (picture above), the bikini was so small that it seems to "split the Atome", like Réard used to say.  This innovation was to expose the navel.  How shocking !

If Réard did "split the Atome", it was because one of his competitor, fashion designer Jacques Heim (1889-1967), had already created the "Atome" (picture above), which, he claimed, was, in 1932, the smallest bathing suit ever.  Réard, who was running his mother's lingerie boutique near "Les Folies Bergères", in Paris, wanted to challenge this title.  Like all the great inventors, he was a very good observer.  He had noticed that women were rolling up their beachwear to get a better tan.  By doing so, they were expressing a need.  Réard found the solution.  He sliced the top off the bottoms and advertised these new two-piece as "smaller than the smallest swimsuit".

But Réard's invention was so audacious and ahead of his time that he could not find a model to wear his first bikini.  He ended up hiring Micheline Bernardini (picture above), a nude dancer from the "Casino de Paris".  She was first seen, wearing the famous tiny two-piece, on July 5, at Piscine Molitor, a public pool in Paris.  Her bikini was a string one, with a g-string back of 30 square inches (194 cm²) of cloth with newspaper type print.

And yes !  It was quite a hit (a bomb), especially among men.  The beautiful Micheline Bernardini received 50 000 letters, and Réard's business soared !  We can see him (picture above, in 1946) adjusting his popular "polka dot strapless bikini" on another queen of beauty.  But if the bikini was a success on the beaches of France, as early as in 1947, it would take time to be welcomed elsewhere...  We will see that in the next posts...