Bikini Story. Patrik Alac

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СКАЧАТЬ in Paris learned that another sort of bomb had gone off – American movie star Rita Hayworth, in her latest film, was “emanating the torrid heat of an atomic explosion”. Miss Hayworth at this time did not yet truly qualify as a “sex bomb” herself but was attributed explosive qualities on account of wearing a single-piece costume that accentuated her curvaceous form, hyperbolically described somewhere as “the most perfectly powerful weapon of war since Creation.” Two days after the real atomic explosion, the Americans sent two marine artists by air to the scene to depict its “torrid heat.” Various newspapers took to printing in question-and-answer form what selected celebrities said they would have done if the Bikini bomb had destroyed the world. Environmental experts meanwhile informed readers of how the Coral Sea and the islands (and the scientific establishment) would take on an “atomic architecture” following the blast at Bikini. It was in this frenzied atmosphere that Réard found the inspiration that was to lead him to christen his two-piece swimsuits that generated scandal. The initial presentation of the costume was planned with meticulous foresight. Réard sponsored a prize at the Molitor Pool for “the most beautiful girl-swimmer.” A brief photo-report in the France Soir of July 2 no doubt confirmed him in his intentions. Its evening edition reported on a fashion parade that had taken place in mid-air on a Paris-New York flight. Stewardesses with shapely legs had promenaded up and down the central aisle under the stupefied gaze of the passengers. Then came July 5. It was a day on which there was genuinely “torrid heat,” for the temperature was 35 °C (96°F) in the shade. Everything conspired to scribe Réard’s bikini on the collective conscious once and for all – tremendous heat imaginably as an echo of the atomic explosion, exotic sands, and the seductive silhouette of a native girl with long legs, bronzing her skin between the sun and the sea. The legend of the bikini was born.

      From Scandal to Scandal

      The American movie actress Rita Hayworth (1918–1987) sunbathing on the grass in a two-piece costume and shoes, (detail).

      Carole Lombard (1908–1942) sunbathing on a chaise lounge during the 1930s. She is wearing shoes with her one-piece costume. The American movie actress was tragically killed when the aircraft in which she was a passenger crashed into a mountainside near Las Vegas. Before becoming one of the best-known movie stars in America, she was one of Mack Sennett’s celebrated “bathing beauties”. Later, she played a leading role in Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be (1942).

      For the first few years after World War II the revolutionary concept introduced by Réard did not achieve the success that was to come to him in following decades. In the well-known – even hackneyed – phrase, he was “ahead of his time”. But this is where we pick up once more on the story of the initial bikinis.

      It is not actually impossible that even Réard himself at first had only a passing interest in the modest bikini (which was nonetheless slated as “revealing all”). His next few collections visibly returned toward the conventional dimensions for two-piece costumes and, understandably, toward a more significant, if distant, buying public. So he might have only dreamed up the bikini as a publicity stunt, returning to it afterward simply because it was accepted by a new era.

      However, the fact remains that publicity material for Réard swimsuits at the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s made no mention of the scandalous two-piece costumes. On the contrary, it showed a line-drawing of a voluptuous blonde in a one-piece costume that accentuated the outline of her body, wearing shoes and stockings, attracting the eye with a mildly lascivious pose, the index finger of her right hand twirling a spiral in her hair. The caption assertively gave it to be understood that “RÉARD costumes have no need for publicity for they are the world leaders. Not everyone can wear a RÉARD.” Not a single word was mentioned about the bikini.

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