The Brief History Of The Bikini

Most people assume that the bikini was a 20th century invention

, but its original concept can be traced back to antiquity. Antique Roman mosaics discovered in the Villa Romana del Casale, Sicily showed women who are wearing garments comparable to bikinis. The images, which were comprised of ten women dubbed as the Bikini Girls, were exercising in clothing that were closely similar to that of the modern bikini. Archeologists in Pompeii likewise discovered an artwork about Roman goddess Venus wearing a garment similar to a bikini.

When women were first introduced into Olympic swimming in 1913, Carl Jantzen was motivated to design the very first functional two-piece swimwear. The design was comprised of a close-fitting one-piece with shorts on the bottom and short sleeves on top. Almost 20 years later, sleeves disappeared, necklines plunged at the back, and the sides were removed. And with the introduction of new materials like latex and nylon, swimsuit designs started hugging the body and had shoulder straps that lowered for tanning.

In 1946 in Paris, fashion designer Jacques Heim and French car engineer Louis Reard introduced the modern bikini. It was a two-piece swimwear with the bottom big enough to conceal the navel of the person wearing it.

In May of 1946, the bathing suit, known as the Atome, was advertised as the world's smallest bathing suit. Later, Reard renamed it the bikini. The name was taken from the Bikini Atoll which is a series of South Pacific islands wherein atomic testing was taken place.

Reard had a difficult time searching for a person to wear and model the swimsuit because of its racy design. Finally, he found Parisian nude dancer Micheline Bernardini. She wore a g-string bikini with a 30-square inches of cloth having a newspaper type printed across. It was introduced in Paris at the Piscine Molitor public pool in July 5.

The one-piece bikini became hugely popular during the 1980s and early 90s. Although Reard's company went bankrupt in 1988, the bikini made up nearly a quarter of overall swimsuit sales - more than any other model in the US. The bikini has become a sign of significant social leap on sexual attitudes, moral concerns, and body consciousness.

According to the New York Times, the two-piece bikini is the female equivalent of the power suit as portrayed in the movies Charlies Angels remake and Blue Crush. In addition, the bikini has also been used as a form of protest. PETA, an animal rights organization, is popular in portraying artists like Alicia Mayer and Pamela Anderson wearing a bikini made of lettuce in its aim to endorse vegetarianism. On the other hand, a student from the Columbia University made use of a bikini to express his disagreement regarding the visit of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranian president to the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

by: Johnathon F Black

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