The bikini is the most important thing since the atom bomb.
Diana Vreeland
The origins of contemporary bikini day may be traced back to a French engineer, a Parisian exotic dancer, a nuclear testing site in the United States, and a postwar fabric shortage.
In 1946, Western Europeans joyously greeted the first war-free summer in years, and French designers came up with fashions to match the liberated mood of the people. Two French designers, Jacques Heim and Louis Réard, developed competing prototypes of the bikini. Heim called his the “atom” and advertised it as “the world’s smallest bathing suit.”
French fashion designer Louis Reard was determined to create an even more scandalous swimsuit. Réard's swimsuit, which was basically a bra top and two inverted triangles of cloth connected by string, was in fact significantly smaller. Made out of a scant 30 inches of fabric, Réard promoted his creation as “smaller than the world’s smallest bathing suit.”
Réard claimed that the bikini was named for Bikini Atoll, the site of nuclear tests by the United States in the Pacific Ocean.
Louis Réard's bikini was so little that he couldn't find anyone brave enough to wear it. After being rejected by a number of fashion models, he came across Micheline Bernardini. She was a 19-year-old nudist at the Casino de Paris who consented to be the first to try on his daring bikini. Michelle Bernardini debuted this revealing costume at the Piscine Molitor in Paris during a poolside fashion show, and it revolutionised swimwear on 5 July 1946. The bikini was a hit, especially among men, and Bernardini received some 50,000 fan letters.
Before long, bold young women in bikinis were causing a sensation along the Mediterranean coast. Spain and Italy passed measures prohibiting bikinis on public beaches but later capitulated to the changing times when the swimsuit grew into a mainstay of European beaches in the 1950s. Réard's business soared, and in advertisements he kept the bikini mystique alive by declaring that a two-piece suit wasn’t a genuine bikini “unless it could be pulled through a wedding ring.”
But it really took when what we would call cultural influencers took to it. It was in 1953, thanks to Brigitte Bardot, that the bikini became a "must-have" and the history of the bikini became historic, when she was photographed wearing one on the Carlton beach at the Cannes Film Festival. She also wore one in 1956, in the film "Et Dieu… créa la femme".
The United States also caught on to the trend, as it was only two years later that Ursula Andress posed in a white bikini on the poster for the James Bond film, Dr. No. The poster created a considerable marketing coup, and women adopted the bikini. According to a study by Time, 65% of younger women adopted the bikini in 1967.
There is no question the bikini is hardly modern. Many think they date back to ancient Roman times because of the murals uncovered in excavated ruins in Sicily. This isn’t really true.
Despite the celebrated images from the mosaics in Piazza Armerina, of the ancient Roman girl wearing what looks like a bikini, the answer is, “not really”. The ancient Roman girls weren’t even first to wear what to our eyes looks like a bikini. However, the fact that we seem to find “bikinis” in ancient depictions should make us rethink our hubristic bias that we in modern times have invented everything and that people in ancient times didn’t know how to live.
Archaeologists have found evidence of bikini-like garments that date to as far back as 5600 BC. That’s roughly 5000 years before the Romans did so. In the Chalcolithic era of around 5600 BC, the mother-goddess of Çatalhöyük, a large ancient settlement in southern Anatolia, was depicted astride two leopards while wearing a bikini-like costume.
Two-piece garments worn by women for athletic purposes are depicted on Greek urns and paintings dating back to 1400 BC. In fact, even just the notion that women participated in sports in the ancient world should make us sit up and take notice.
Today we tend to imagine women in the ancient world as being practically sequestered in their homes, spinning, weaving and having babies. But this is a gross oversimplification of their role.
Active women of ancient Greece wore a breast band called a mastodeton or an apodesmos, which continued to be used as an undergarment in the Middle Ages. While men in ancient Greece abandoned the perizoma, partly high-cut briefs and partly loincloth, women performers and acrobats continued to wear it.
In the famous mosaics to be found at Villa Romana del Casale in Piazza Armerina, the girls who seem to be wearing the “bikini” are Roman and the so-called bikini had already been around for at least 5,000 years by then. In the artwork “Coronation of the Winner” done in floor mosaic in the Chamber of the Ten Maidens (Sala delle Dieci Ragazze) in Sicily the bikini girls are depicted weight-lifting, discus throwing, and running.
The bikini was gradually done away as Christianity became more influential as the centuries wore on. Christian attitudes towards swimming restricted the clothing of women for centuries, the bikini disappeared from the historical record after the Romans until the early 20th century with Louis Beard’s re-invention of the two piece bathing suit as the ‘bikini’.
Photos: In 1956 Emilio Pucci designed this bikini inspired by the mosaics of the Villa Romana Del Casale in Sicily.
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Ensemble-pantalon à jabot (détail) de Chanel porté par Diana Vreeland en tulle brodé de paillettes, mousseline de soie et dentelle (1937-38) présenté à l'exposition “Gabrielle Chanel. Manifeste de Mode” du Palais Galliera, mai 2021.
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Les Editions Rizzoli publient un ouvrage constitué des manuscrits de l’iconique rédactrice de mode, un livre précieux qui raconte son passage au sein de l’édition americaine de Vogue dans les annnées 60.
L’an dernier, la réalisatrice Lisa Immordino Vreeland présentait un portrait intime de la vie de la rédactrice de mode dans son film Diana Vreeland : the eye has to travel. Ce sont aujourd’hui les éditions Rizzoli avec la participation d’Alexandre Vreeland, le fils de Diana Vreeland qui présentent un ouvrage relatant ses années passées au Vogue US. On sait de la rédactrice qu’elle communiquait avec ses collaborateurs à l’aide de mémos qu’elle dictait chaque matin depuis son appartement de Park Avenue. Ce sont plus de 250 de ses correspondances avec des légendes de la mode – Horst P. Horst, Veruschka, Cecil Beaton ou encore Cristobal Balenciaga - qui sont publiées pour la première fois. Ces notes manuscrites échangées avec ces grands noms dévoilent la précision et l’irrévérence de la rédactrice dans son travail et racontent l'histoire de la mode en filigrane. Chacun des chapitres de cet ouvrage se voient également commentés par des journalistes de Vogue US ayant collaborés avec Diana Vreeland, ouvrant ainsi les coulisses du magazine qui se métamorphosa sous sa direction de 1963 à 1971. De ses relations avec ses collaborateurs chez Condé Nast et avec les photographes à sa quête de la « femme Vogue » jusqu’à ses inspirations et son sens du détail. Un ouvrage précieux offrant un aperçu intime du parcours de la rédactrice qui se considérait, selon ses propres mots, comme l'une des femmes les plus influentes de l’histoire de la mode
Diana Vreeland Memos: The Vogue Years, édité par Alexander Vreeland, $ 55.
Udine.
“Il rosso è un grande chiarificatore – luminoso e rivelatore. Non riesco a immaginare di annoiarmi con il rosso – sarebbe come annoiarmi con la persona che amo.” Diana Vreeland