|
You can thank (or curse, as the case may be) two Frenchmen, Jacques Heim and Louis Reard, for that tiny scrap of material known as the bikini. Neither man really invented the item, as two-piece bathing suits had been around for a long time and were depicted in wall paintings and ancient Greek urns. But both men manufactured and popularized the "itsy bitsy teeny weeny" swimsuit. In 1946, Heim, a clothing designer, fashioned a two-piece bathing suit that he named the "Atome." Several months later, Reard, a mechanical engineer, followed suit and designed a similar garment.
Capitalizing on a recent "hot" topic, he named his creation the "Bikini" after the Bikini Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands used by the U.S. government to test atomic bombs during Operation Crossroads. Getting back to the story, apparently Reard was the better marketer, and his version of the bikini earned the lion's share of publicity, not to mention controversy. The new fashion was so scant, Reard had difficulty finding a model to wear the suit on the catwalks of Paris. He finally convinced a nude dancer
to model his design, and the rest is swimsuit history.
|
