In the meantime he has long since won a majority, but in 1946 it was difficult to find a woman who would introduce him to the world: the bikini. Now the once banned two-parter is 75 years old.
Düsseldorf / Paris – Its name reveals that its creator Louis Réard was aware of the societal explosiveness of his invention.
When a tight two-piece swimwear called Bikini was presented in Paris on July 5, 1946, a few days earlier the USA had tested an atomic bomb on the atoll of the same name in the Pacific.
One year after the end of the Second World War, none of the serious mannequins, as models were called back then, was ready to present the fashionable innovation of the French Réard. It was up to the nude dancer Micheline Bernardini to present the first bikini to the world public in the Molitor swimming pool in Paris.
Bond-Girl Ursula Andress
In the 1950s and 1960s, the breathtakingly provocative two-parter for its time was still banned from swimming on many beaches. It took and needed some prominent women such as Brigitte Bardot, Marilyn Monroe and Ursula Andress before it began its global triumph on beaches and in swimming pools.
In 1962 the time was ripe for the legendary screen appearance of Ursula Andress as Bond girl Honey Ryder. In a bikini model that would look rather prudish today, she emerged from the sea singing and James Bond, aka Sean Connery, was amazed.
“The bikini reaches the limits of what is possible,” said fashion designer Ursula Templin. “It appeases a society that forbids nudity and is much more provocative.”
The piece of fabric that Andress was wearing at the time ended up being sold at an auction in Los Angeles a few months ago – but this may have been due to the lush minimum bid of 300,000 US dollars: In 2001, the Dr.-No-Bikini was still for $ 60,000 changed hands – the record for a piece of swimwear at the time.
Sexual Liberation Sign
The bikini that mechanical engineer Réard had demonstrated has undergone an image change: from shameless and scandalous to sexy and emancipatory. At the latest with the sexual liberation of the 1968 generation, the topless wave and nudism, freedom of movement went well beyond Réard’s creation.
In the 1980s and 1990s, bikinis were naturally presented by supermodels like Claudia Schiffer and Naomi Campbell. In the meantime, the bikini has had a few offshoots: microkini, monokini, mixkini, tankini and burkini.
At the beginning of the 20th century, some bathing textiles didn’t have to be too short, but in the 21st century some wanted to stop the countermovement: The highest administrative court in France stopped the planned ban on the burkini in 2016 and the volleyball world federation prescribed its sportswomen in 2012 that their panties should not be wider than have to be seven centimeters.
Last year, an entire museum was dedicated to the bikini in Germany in time for the 75th. The Bikini Art Museum in Bad Rappenau in Baden-Württemberg has a fund of at least 1200 exhibits and 2000 square meters of exhibition space.
Despite its global success, the bikini did not make Réard as rich as he had hoped: The original bikini, which he protected as utility model No. 19431, had been copied too unrestrainedly. The Frenchman died in Lausanne in Switzerland in 1984 and was buried there like the French woman Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, the inventor of another fashion icon, the “little black dress” 50 years ago. dpa
