July 23, the magazine found it necessary to declare a complete turnaround, a radical change in its opinion of swimwear. Accompanying pictures featured only small two-piece costumes, while at the end of the article, the caption under a photo of a one-piece costume read, “The exception: a swimsuit comprising just one element.”
Three weeks later a knitting pattern for making a one-piece costume was printed under the subheading “For those who do not like two-piece costumes.”
It was in this way that two-piece bathing costumes, at this rather late stage, but hereafter forever, took on the status of standard beachwear and favourite of swimmers.
French couturier Jacques Heim’s evening dress for the “Maid of Cotton 1962”, Penne Percy. The long cotton dress is decorated with large flowers printed upon it in colour. It was first featured on June 19, 1962 in Deauville, on the occasion of the International Cotton Convention.
A Réard bikini, 1949.
A Réard bikini, May 1, 1956.
A Réard bikini, May 18, 1956.
Strangely, any scandal that surrounded the bikini never reached the text pages of the magazines. On the contrary, magazines at this time tended to concentrate instead on such problematical questions as “Is my marriage in danger if I go on vacation by myself?” and “Should I take my children on holiday to the seaside?” They likewise gave full instructions on how you could make your costume for a masked ball out of old curtains.
So, despite everything, there were only one or two scattered insinuations that there might have been a scandal going on somewhere behind closed doors. A French journalist wrote, “This summer you do not just take your clothes off at the seaside – you give a full navel review!” No one seemed to have the courage to come out and confront the theme of nudity. Vogue, as always, thought there would be only one burning question this season: “Should a girl wear a hat or not?”
But mindsets were changing. And the covers of the weekly magazine Elle showed how much they were changing. On June 25, the headline was “Holiday-time at last!” and the picture was of the buxom torso of a Rita-Hayworth-style blonde in a one-piece blue costume. On each side was an equally blonde young girl in a one-piece costume, representing a daughter. This family, idyll in several ways, took a downhill turn over the following two weeks as it presented women of a more mature age-group who attracted attention only by their unusual hairstyle or headdress (a coronet apparently made of buckles, for instance, or a sun-hat outlined in bright red and black circles).
The cover of the July 16 issue was distinctly different. It showed a girl in a straw hat wearing transparent overalls and holding a kitten in her arms. The background was rustic, featuring bales of hay, pitchforks, hay-carts, and so forth.
On July 23, any attempt at a family scenario had vanished. In full colour, the front cover again presented a seductive blonde. This time she was wearing a two-piece costume very similar to a bikini somewhat hidden beneath a Tahitian-style pareo, with a fishing-rod in one hand and a scoop-net in the other. What was visible of the costume – white with red streaks – was highly effective, emphasizing the girl’s very feminine figure and clearly suggesting sexual connotation, heightened by the symbolism of her “fishing”. The scoop-net, in form not unlike a butterfly-net, was evidently meant to represent the nebulous contrast between vulnerable innocence and seductive charm (appropriate to a “fisher of men”).
A variation on this cover picture, featuring the same girl, appeared in an advertisement for “Your Daily Paper” France Soir. On this occasion, the beautiful damsel laid on the edge of a swimming pool, taking an afternoon siesta. To one side of her, lying there casually, a pair of trainers. Her half-open pareo afforded a glimpse of the bottom of a classic swimsuit covering the navel.
This was the first time (certainly in France) that a magazine cover deliberately used what was actually a pin-up picture in addressing its usual readers, who were of course mainly housewives, secretaries, and working women. And it represents an eloquent proof of the stunning change – which took place over a matter of a few weeks – in the way women were portrayed. All mocking opposition, any suggestion of public outrage, had evidently faded away altogether.
It was only toward the end of that year that women’s magazines really discovered the pleasures of summertime. Thereafter, their pages were full of hot-weather recipes and instructions on sunbathing. It was then, too, that advertisements for sun oils and barrier creams as well as slimming products, first made an appearance.
The new emphasis involving such increased publicity makes it much easier now to trace the further spread of the briefer version of the two-piece bathing costume.
A line-drawing advertisement in the issue of Elle, dated July 16, drawing the public’s attention to a sun cream which utilized the power of “Uviol”. It claimed to be “the sun cream that guarantees you a tan like a Creole’s,” and showed a beautiful woman largely unclothed – and with navel exposed.
Later in the summer of 1947, the same magazine contained the first advertisement for natural slimming. “Slim without medication and without regular dieting,” it warbled alluringly, while proposing a course of treatment based on seaweed algae. In the same issue, the writers suggested that women readying to take their summer vacation should “sculpt their bodies for the beach” with the help of special gymnastic exercises. Moreover, users of certain other creams and potions mentioned in related articles are promised “firmness of bosom.” “Do you want a bigger bust? You can have one – if you use our breast-tensioning cream.” Other articles actually detailed dietary regimes for slimming. And still, others gave
