the optimal times of exposure for different types of skin, together with suitable protective measures against the sun’s forceful radiation.
It was at this time in France that the first publicity material appeared for the bathing sites along the Côte d’Azur. Whole sections of magazines were devoted to it, featuring the coastal locations as unbeatable holiday resorts for people from inland regions of the country. Not to go to visit them would be to turn one’s vacation plans into a waking nightmare.
Holidays, sunshine, beaches – in their way, these were indications of the progressive spread of brief two-piece bathing costumes. Special care of the legs, the bust, and the skin, protection against the sun, and methods for slimming, all very clearly reflected the evolution of a new cult of the body evidently promoted by the ever greater areas of visible skin. “The legs of a statue and the bosom of Venus” were the height of ambition for many bathers in a bikini, who now had to be concerned with her appearance in a way very different from when she had worn a one-piece garment.
Bikini from the Réard collection, June 12, 1949.
Micheline Bernardini in Louis Réard’s original bikini. The photo records the handwritten dedication “To the talented artist M. Réard. A souvenir from Molitor, Micheline Bernardini.”
But there is another way to track the rise of the two-piece costume’s predominance, apart from via the fashion magazines. Despite the previously mentioned issue of Elle, dated July 30, 1946, which provided a knitting pattern for a one-piece costume “for those who do not like two-piece costumes”, the magazine increased its printing for those interested in two-piece costumes. Throughout 1947, the magazine was chock-full of instructions on how to sew together two-piece costumes for women and swimming trunks “for husband and/or son” in cotton, using 100 grams of lemon yellow cotton fabric.
Line-drawings and other illustrations from the same year show groups of bathers, among whom all the women are wearing two-piece costumes that leave the navel exposed.
On June 22, sewing instructions were published for a two-piece costume in red and white using 175 grams of cotton. Two weeks later, in the issue dated July 5, there was a photo of a bather in a genuine Réard bikini. And two weeks later still, there was the first bikini cartoon. A matronly woman in a two-piece, practically non-existent, costume tries to breast-feed a squalling infant, while two young damsels of ethereal beauty dressed in brief bathing costumes pass close by her – and appear not to see anything unusual at all.
For the whole of this period, Vogue remained reactionary and conservative, going merely as far as to present a two-piece costume by Schiaparelli in which the material was lined and slightly padded, and which covered more than it left showing. The only costume that remotely resembled the bikini was the one in the Helena Rubinstein ad for sun cream. At the same time, the prestigious magazine was regrettably prepared to provide misinformation; it claimed that women in general considered the short two-piece costumes repellent. Especially loathed was the bikini, the very name of which women hated and regarded as devilish. It was not too devilish for Vogue to bring itself to print, apparently, provided it was accompanied by sharply disparaging words. The magazine went on in its peremptory fashion to state that the bikini was being altogether shunned, and expressed its relief that in time to come, when beachwear had once more turned to less provocative styles, the immoral bikini (which it had said no one was wearing) would – God be praised – be outcast once and for all.
It was in a remarkably similar spirit, during the summer of 1948, that the magazine reported that formal evening wear was beginning to relax and show a bit more skin. In an unexpected reversal of status, the bikini – that swimsuit reduced to no more than two scraps of cloth – was now beginning to claim the modesty that until this time belonged to the evening dress, while the evening dress, in revenge, was wilfully giving up its virtue.
The “two scraps of cloth” cliché suggesting immorally insufficient cover for parts of the body with sexual connotations very plainly demonstrates the magazine’s opinion of Réard’s creation.
It was the end of 1950 before Vogue started to print regular features on beachwear fashion. Reports might then in considerable detail inform readers, for example, of beach cloaks and ponchos, illustrated with models by Rochas, Dior, and Schiaparelli.
In the same year, a new feature entitled “The Joys of Sunshine” appeared, and showed all kinds of summer costumes – even if the subheading “The joys of the water” then depicted outfits for going sailing in rather more imaginative swimming costumes.
Sport was something Vogue was always advising women to enjoy – in moderation. Sport – exercise for young people that may initially be strenuous, before years of discretion are reached and activities are better regulated, until they finally become no more than a strict health-routine – is one of the secrets of beauty.
The tone of a matriarch’s solemnly wise counsel is all too evident. Yet the cotton manufacturers had better reason to be unhappy at the bikini’s success. The arrival of synthetic materials, and particularly nylon – of which the bikini had immediately been made – constituted a real threat to the cotton industry. That industry now felt obliged to widely advertise the advantages of cotton, and specifically for swimming costumes. It was cheap to use, it required and responded to artistry, it was light, and it retained heat when in the water.
In parallel, the advantages of a one-piece costume were contrasted with more revealing swimsuits. It was certainly more practical to swim in than a bikini – and to illustrate this, the same publication featured the extraordinary “Harakiri costume”, a one-piece creation by Calixte for Marguerite Monsenergue. It was a costume that had a wide slot at the level of the stomach: once in the water, the swimmer could pull a slide across, therefore opening the costume and facilitating movement. The opening, which looked rather like a shark’s mouth in the middle of the costume, strikes us as ludicrous today.
But all these efforts of resistance on the part of groups in the fashion world who never accepted Réard, nonetheless contributed to a significant change in fashion itself.
With the introduction of Dior’s New Look, the diversity of materials became an essential trait of contemporary fashion after years of wartime restrictions and scarcity. “We had just endured a period of war”, Christian Dior would later write, “a period of uniforms, and of women in those uniforms which gave them all uniformly the shape of prize-fighters. I used to dream of women delicate as flowers, with slender shoulders, their necklines low and cut with the fine curves of lianas, their skirts flared wide like the petals of flowers.”
Réard’s reductionist concept, which had corresponded so well with the notions of freedom, suddenly became no more than the product of its era, unattached to current trends. For the guardians of morals in the fashion world, such a fate for it was indeed welcome.
Réard and his creation were thus relegated to the shadows.
In 1965 Réard dreamed up an even briefer costume than the bikini: the sexy-bikini, precursor of the Rio-style thong.
