Bras and Bikinis

Women wore various layers of heavy, one-piece swimsuits until the first half of the 20th Century, when swimsuits started to actually became practical for real swimming. In 1943, as part of wartime rationing, the U.S. Government ordered a 10 percent reduction in the fabric used in woman's swim wear. Manufacturers removed the skirt panel and created a bare midriff, creating the first two-piece swimsuit in thousands of years.

Rudi Geinreich sold over 3000 of his monokini after it was introduced in 1964—all in Europe.

Visiting her sister at the beach for only one day, this young lady decides her bra and panties will substitute for the bikini she left at home. Ironically, if she stripped down to her underwear on a public street downtown, she'd likely draw the police. But a few blocks away on the beach no one will even notice. Compared to the bikini below, there's no discernable difference.

Invention of the bikini in July, 1946 is credited to a Frenchman named Louis Reard, a former automotive engineer, who was running his mother's lingerie business. He is said to have named it after the Bikini Atoll, where the U.S. had tested its atomic weapons only two days previously, because of the swimsuits' explosive effect.

Another Frenchmen, Jacques Heim, had created his own two piece bathing suit just weeks before. He called his suit "The Atome", and he described it as "The world's smallest bathing suit." Reard followed up by calling his "Smaller than the world's smallest bathing suit." Reard, always the outgoing and clever businessman, added to the sensation by saying that a two-piece was not a bikini unless it could be pulled through a wedding band.

But the bikini wasn't strictly new. Murals on the walls of ancient Sicily show women wearing two-piece suits covering their breasts and hips very much like bikinis circa 1960. After this, the notion of special water apparel seems to have been lost for centuries.

Reard's bikini was not immediately worn by the majority of women, and some Catholic countries like Span and Portugal banned it. In 1952, Miss World contestants outdid each other wearing bikinis, and the swimsuit was banned from future competitions for many years.

In 1964, swimsuit designer Rudi Geinreich showcased the first monokini, a topless swimsuit, illustrated at top right. Two women who attempted to wear it in the United States were arrested. Nonetheless, he sold over 3000 that first year in Europe, where the topless trend was more acceptable.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the coverage for swimsuits and underwear becomes in some circumstances virtually indistinguishable, as illustrated in the photo at right.

For a variety of reasons, some women prefer to dispense with a bra altogether, and they are Braless in Public >