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Retouched photo dating from the end of the 19th century showing a temporary changing-cubicle, (details).

Photo of Coney Island at the beginning of the 20th century. The holiday resort regarded by some as “Sodom by the Sea” seems to be living up to its reputation as these five ladies lift their skirts in the style of a dubious rendition of the French can-can. They are wearing swimming costumes that cover the entire body with the exception of the arms. It is interesting to note how many layers of material are involved. Over a woollen body-stocking a short pair of trunks is held in place by straps at the thighs; on top of which is the bathing costume proper. The Rubenesque proportions of the carefree dancing girls are typical of their time.

The beginning of a new millennium – let alone a new century – simply demands a quick but thorough look back at the past hundred years. Different outline sketches of the history of the twentieth century might all too quickly resort to headline-style formulae about “a century of war and terrorism”, “a century of barbarism”, and omit any mention of a great number of events and triumphs that should be rightfully regarded as entirely positive. These might seem to have been of secondary significance in relation to more sombre events, but they certainly cannot be excluded if our historical round-up of a hundred years is to retain its proper balance, if it is to be truly historical, and not be reduced to checklists of damage and destruction, of wars and disasters alike and their cost of lives and property, of the numbers of casualties, and of the people, places, and things that are now as if they had never been.

Made possible by the decline of prudish Christianity, the return of the human body to a status in which it could once more be looked at and admired is surely one of these positive events. The process of liberalisation began at the end of World War II and eventually extended across the entire Western world. It was paralleled by moralising court judgments and injunctions against it, many of them relying on ancient laws well overdue for repeal – and was decisively assisted by the invention of the bikini.

Measurement of the effect of this new culture of the body has, itself, become a basis of scientific theory. It is often a level of “dress formality” that represents a means of establishing precisely where on the equivalent scale of personal liberties a given society has reached. In another sense, dress formality (or the lack of it) is no more than a very old – and very elementary – method of communication between people. Besides indicating class, rank, and social status, clothes since the 1960s have also had ideological implications. It is interesting in this regard that even something that bears no resemblance at all to an official uniform may, nonetheless, become the equivalent of a uniform for one group or another. At the head of such revolutionary sartorial tendencies – with one or two scandals to celebrate its birth, and one or two outbursts of moral outrage to celebrate its coming of age – proudly stands the bikini.

Jenna Pietersen on the beach with a Canail bikini of Pain de sucre. Photo: Éric Deniset, 2009.

Another aspect of the upheavals since 1945 may be grasped all the better in the light of the words “consumer demand and mass communications” used to betoken the totality of social activities. A history lesson on the bikini would at once point out the importance of the combination of saleable goods and the benefits of advertising following World War II. It should perhaps be recalled that it was during a time of economic depression that the bikini was launched and the cinema re-launched. At the beginning of the 1950s, film directors made a lot of the “almost nude” look of the itty-bitty bathing costume in the hope of attracting ever more customers to their auditoriums. The popularity of the films they produced was, in turn, utilized by the designers of bikinis as a showroom to display their latest creations. It was possible to foresee the day of the publicity film-clip which had everything: goods that people wanted, described with attractive enthusiasm, all done artistically.

All the same, the spread of “the smallest swimsuit in the world” did not follow solely from the newly liberalized social perception of the human body but relied on the application of that perception to the realm of women’s fashions. Anorexia and other eating disorders, the fanatical pursuit of sport and of bodybuilding, are only the latest manifestations of the changed vision of the human body that began in the 1950s – first as a new freedom, and then, for some, as a new norm that required discipline or constraint.

All those aspects that might be included in the traditional history books are equally and demonstrably allied to the evolution of the bikini.

This book tells the story of the bikini – its birth in a Parisian swimming-pool in the course of a stiflingly hot July afternoon in 1946, the scandal that followed (which relegated the bikini for ten years to the pages of illustrated magazines for men), its astounding breakthrough onto the cinema screen, the interest that it suddenly aroused in the fashion-houses, and finally its triumphant and eventually universal appearance on beaches the world over. For, from Brazil to the Mediterranean via the sandy stretches all along the Californian coast, the bikini has become an irreplaceable part of our aquatic recreational landscape.

It may be brightly coloured, multi-coloured, or a simple single colour; it may be made of expensive material, of cotton or Lycra; it may spread across the hips or leave them largely bare with just a thong or string at the back; or it may consist of no more than brief triangles, like leaves that have somehow gotten stuck on the skin. Alternatively, it may be designed strictly for effect and present a veritable barricade over the breasts. All of these forms are known and seen on a daily basis everywhere we go.

Golden orange bikini of Pain de sucre, 1990. Model: Sonia, Fam agency, Paris. Photo: Delavigne.

Another photo from the beginning of the 20th century shows the American holiday resort of Coney Island and a group of happy bathers. The women are wearing swimsuits that resemble nightshirts. Most often deep blue with white stripes (a colour scheme that was widely used, especially in beach costumes for boys) in spirals, vertical lines or horizontal hoops. Such costumes extended down to the calves of the legs.

A beach in northern Italy between Genoa and Santa Margherita Ligure around 1900. In the foreground are two couples walking at the water’s edge. The men are wearing dark-coloured costumes not unlike sportswear, while the women’s swimsuits are longish, reaching down to the knees. In the background are the crowds who have thronged to the semicircular beach of the bay – a scene that remains much the same today. To the right are the heads of a few swimmers, and to the left at the back is a complex of beach huts and entertainment tents.

Retouched photo dating from the end of the 19th century showing a temporary changing-cubicle. The lady in the middle has already changed, and now waits within the shelter of a shell-shaped structure for her lady-friend to change behind a curtain. A third woman, perhaps the mother, is still fully dressed on the right. She wears a hat and a neckerchief, and stands erect behind a chair holding a parasol. In the distant background, two other women are walking on the beach. The whole scene is undoubtedly staged very carefully to present a somewhat risqué view of the state of undress of the young lady who is changing. this could be classedas an erotic picture.

Comprising two pieces of fairly thin material, generally following a double-triangular design, it does not seem to hold much promise when seen dangling from a hanger. But on a woman, it undergoes an incredible transformation to behold! Those two pathetic bits of cloth you might have thought were only accidentally on the shop’s swimwear shelf suddenly change in form and dimension as if someone has breathed life into them. These patches of material on the skin are all at once points of interest, ornaments, even statements. The bikini reveals as much as it clothes, an image which fills many male observers with enthusiasm at the sight of such a transformation.

There is virtually no other item of clothing linked with so many ideas, images, and preconceived impressions. For the bikini belongs to the mythology of today that shapes our concept of reality. In much the same way as the speed of a motorcar bestows on its driver an intoxicating sense of power, and indeed just as a gold credit card has the power to avail its possessor of infinite possibilities, the bikini represents a blank screen open to a person’s imagination. When we acquire such things or begin to use them, some of the magic they have, the scope for imagination that we credit them with, rubs off on us and can change our lives forever.

So when a woman wears a bikini, she is not simply dressed in any old bathing costume. On the contrary, she is wearing a magical thing, something that will transform her and turn her into someone else – like the magic wand in fairy tales. She becomes, you might say, an actress acting out her own life. For those new virtues bestowed on her by the bikini will take her into a world of new and hitherto unseen possibilities, nothing like the ordinary everyday world – a new world in which everything that should happen does happen, and happens as if destined to happen.

But for a bather in a bikini to be able to reach that world of new possibilities, she must find herself enough space to enable the metamorphosis to take place. Only then does the full range of possibilities become fully available to her. This special kind of space is to be found in what have already been described as “aquatic recreational landscapes” – the sands and beaches along the coasts of the continents: a strip of “space” consisting of an almost infinite number of shorelines and banks, where the rules and regulations that normally govern our lives may be put aside, their authority ignored.

Indeed, we all know this aquatic recreational landscape very well. It forms an irreplaceable part of all our lives. Yet, even for a swimsuit as dazzlingly wonderful as the bikini, the process of reaching that landscape and then becoming established in it was neither short nor straightforward.

The first bathers to compete for space on our beaches made their appearance at the end of the nineteenth century. Until that time the sea had been regarded as disturbingly dark and mysterious. So often extolled by classical authors and poets, the sea had become almost entirely hidden in the murky and morbid world that was the medieval experience of human life. It represented the unknown and the perilous. Even to be near the sea was hazardous and unhealthy. People who lived on the coasts kept well clear of the edge, especially when building their houses, in order to be protected from “dangerous currents”, not to mention evil spirits.

A group of ladies around 1910. They wear longish bathing costumes down to the knees – but these are costumes worthy of some outlandish festival with the evident variety of their colours and imagination. In the middle is a Santa Claus with white trimmings. On the left are two characters who might well be jesters at some medieval royal court. And further left is a striped dress meant to be a swimming costume. That there is a close connection between swimwear fashion and lingerie could hardly be made plainer. All the women are wearing shoes (the one fourth from the left seems even to be wearing boxing trainers) and tights.

This belief, that certain areas were injurious to health, lasted right up until the beginning of the twentieth century. It was always said, for example, that the Coliseum in Rome gave off “unwholesome vapours” – of which much was written by Stendhal in his Promenades dans Rome. Henry James’ Daisy Miller contained something similar: the eponymous heroine dies after a night of madness spent in an ancient amphitheatre.

The seaside was prescribed as treatment only for those suffering from incurable illnesses. On the periphery of the unknown, beyond what had long been presumed as the Edge of the World, the Abyss and the Void, it was not so much a seaside resort as a last resort. In much the same vein, during the seventeenth century to plunge head-first into the sea three times was held to be an efficacious remedy for rabies.

But during the nineteenth century, the genuine medical advantages of residence beside the sea began to be extolled. Salt water, well shaken until foamy, was declared to have health-giving qualities and prescribed for anaemia, nervous conditions, convalescence after fractures or sprains, asthma, and skin diseases. Such “cures”, however, were strictly science-based (as indeed was just about everything during the nineteenth century), and a patient was required to follow very precise instructions as listed. You might thus be required, with your feet in water that was neither too shallow nor too deep and reasonably close to the beach, to practise lithe movements for precisely five minutes, and then to stride forward boldly until the water reached the level of your ears, and to remain in that position for as long as possible without moving. Having finally left the water, it would then be imperative to restore your badly slowed circulation by means of stretching exercises on the beach.

It is rather like what happened when public services began on the trains. Passengers were advised to protect themselves from being thrown around by the high speeds by strapping cushions on the stomach and back. Again it was a matter of protecting the body from the terrors of a new and unknown environment.

Bathers on the beach at Deauville around 1925. The swimming costume that looks like a long shirt reaching down to the hips is close-fitting and emphasizes the form of the body. The woman with the rather anxious air about her is slim and obviously quite different from the bathers of 1900. In the distant background it is possible to discern the sheets that had replaced wicker beach-chairs and voluminous beach tents. This is the beginning of the assault by the masses on beaches all over the world.

Beachwear fashion at the beginning of the 20th century. Six women gracefully adopt a uniform pose aboard a boat. They wear swimming-caps (one of which is decorated with a feather) and one-piece costumes inspired by sportswear that was particularly fashionable at the time. With the right leg crossed over the left, they bring their hands together over their right knees. The costumes, which only just cover the thighs, clearly show the new minimalist tendency in swimwear fashion that was hereafter also to be seen in various sports. All six are wearing makeup – notably using lipstick to alter the shape of their mouths – including whitening their facial skin to contrast with their darkened lips, giving a doll-like look that is enhanced by the hair jammed under the swimming-caps and the rather fixed smiles. This is evidently a time when innocence had begun to be taken less seriously as the body might be revealed more and more openly.

Costumes for bathing were first designed for practical use on the beach and in the sea. Initially, there was a great difference between beachwear and costumes for the swimming-pool or inland lake. The latter was modelled virtually precisely on items of clothing that were stitched together layer upon layer as worn by women at the end of the nineteenth century in a town or village.

Therefore, at that time, trips to the seaside were by no means necessarily associated with swimming. In any case, to enter the water at all usually meant no more than a headlong plunge before coming out again – literally a “quick dip”. This is why the first “bathing costumes” were as full and as ornate as everyday clothing, and designed to cover as much as possible. Another function was to keep the bather warm, whether on the beach or in the water, for which reason most were made of thick material with insulating properties, such as cotton. Bathing costumes were certainly not meant for ogling.

Until World War I, the distance across the beach and into the water might be traversed in a “bathing machine”, a sort of changing-cubicle on wheels that was pushed into the water; the bather might then jump from it straight into “the sea”.

These photos clearly demonstrate how beach-wear fashion has changed since the early days. The need not to offend contemporary views on modesty, the difficulties of making bathing costumes in which it was actually possible to swim – these were the great problems that real creativity had to solve. At the same time it should be noted – in light of these photos of an era now long gone – that it was at this point that the space of the beach began to be appreciated. The somewhat vaudevillian elements of dress shown in the last of these pictures imply an atmosphere of popular festivity appropriate to summer at the seaside.

Public announcement of the contest of “Most Beautiful Swimmer”, 1946. At the time, readers could not have imagined how the bikini was going to appear and alter mindsets.

Originally, the beach made no allowance for the separation of people by class or type: its supposedly bracing virtues thus also made it a place of unusual civil liberty. In time too, and equally noticeable, the leisure industry – from which the tourist industry would later stem – began to gain a foothold along the shoreline. The great constructions several floors high on Coney Island, which dominate the coastline like a sort of maritime Champs-Élysées on stilts, and the masses of sun-seekers on the beach near Genoa behind which a wild forest of tents has been erected, afford us an idea of what it must have been like at the fumblingly improvised beginnings of our aquatic recreational landscape.

But it is on the faces of those early bathers that the true purpose of this newly constituted space is shown still more clearly. These are smilingly joyful faces that might have been working for some publicity agency. They are the extraordinarily striking evidence of the total freedom of the beach as a place of pleasure and fun. They are proof to us of the successful inauguration of a world in which only tranquillity and the pleasures of relaxation reign.

Once World War I was over, all the conditions were set in place for beach life as we know it today. A picture from 1925 shows a woman in a fairly rudimentary one-piece costume sitting between two lounge chairs at Deauville. The costume, which resembles a nightgown raised to the level of the thigh, is designed for straightness of line in trim with the contours of the body. But it does not yet reveal those contours. The woman, who peers out at us somewhat anxiously, is slender and looks quite different from the bathers of around 1900. In the background it is possible to make out the slope of the beach on which reclined chairs and beach-towels have replaced the crammed baskets and tents. The invasion of the world’s beaches by the masses has now begun. The scene shown could very well – apart from the style of clothing – be seen taking place at a coastal bathing-site (of any kind at all) today. The accessories left unattended in the background – the sandals and, a bit farther back, a bag, a towel, and a sunshade – bear witness to a family excursion to the beach.

In no more than twenty years, going to the beach in this way was to become a truly global phenomenon in which men and women of every country and every language shared their passion for sea-bathing and disporting themselves on the sands. It was also exactly twenty years before the bikini would be born.

The jam-packed Deligny Pool in Paris on July 2, 1958. Evidently, most of the people there are men. The few women present are wearing one-piece or two-piece costumes indiscriminately.

The Bikini

The bikini is a bathing costume that is narrow and in two parts, of a maximum area of 45 square centimetres (8 square inches), and not specifically intended for bathing. It can be sold in a matchbox, or folded easily into a handbag compact. It represents clothing for a woman such that she does not feel completely naked, yet leaves her sufficiently undressed to be irresistibly attractive to men.