The bikini, a two-piece swimsuit resembling a bra and panties, was first designed in 1946 by Louis Réard and Jacques Heim. It has many styles, including the string bikini, bandeau top, and tankini. The name comes from Bikini Atoll, and it became popular with the help of movie stars. A monokini is a one-piece swimsuit resembling a bikini, and the first one was designed in 1964 by Rudi Gernreich.
A bikini is a women’s two-piece swimsuit that resembles a bra and panties in shape. Although Louis Réard and Jacques Heim designed the first known swimsuit under this name for a 1946 fashion show, the style predates its design. Films and photographs from the early 20th century show women in two-piece bathing suits, and there are even ancient Roman mosaics with women exercising in outfits that closely resemble the modern suit.
There are many different styles of bikini. The one that made its official debut in 1946 was a string bikini, with triangles of fabric covering the breasts and genitalia and strings making up the rest. Many also offer breech coverage, although the 1946 did not. Other styles include a bandeau top, a rectangular strip of fabric that covers the breasts, a top with cups similar to a push-up bra, and more modest bottom pieces such as briefs, shorts, or briefs with a small attached skirt. A more modern variant, the tankini, includes a tank top.
Réard and Heim named their new swimsuit after Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, the site of a recent nuclear weapons test, in reference to the “explosive” effect the swimsuit would have. The design was so outrageous that only a naked dancer agreed to model it. However, it began to catch on over the next few decades, with the help of bikini-clad movie stars like Brigitte Bardot in 1956’s And God Created Woman and Ursula Andress as the first Bond girl in 1962’s Dr. No. It was one of the most popular styles in women’s swimwear.
A new type of bikini-inspired swimsuit for women is called a monokini. The term is a play on the original name, as mono means “one” and bi means “two”, although the bikini is named after a place and its name doesn’t really mean “two” of anything. A monokini may simply be the bottom of a two-piece garment worn alone for topless sunbathing, or it may be a skimpy one-piece garment resembling a bikini, leaving the midriff almost bare. The first monokini was designed in 1964 by Rudi Gernreich and left the breasts bare, although it provided significant coverage of the lower half of the torso.
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