Sixty years ago this week, the world’s first bikinis made their debut at a poolside fashion show in France. This particular swimsuit is now so common that it’s hard to understand how shocking people found it at the time. When bikinis arrived, its revealing cut scandalized even French fashion models who were supposed to wear it; the models refused, and the original designer had to enlist strippers! Bikinis slowly gained acceptance?first on the Riviera, then in the United States, and became a beachfront staple. When bikinis were unveiled in the late 1940s, it was not the first time that women had worn revealing garments in public. In the fourth century, for example, Roman gymnasts wore bandeau tops, bikini bottoms, and even anklets that would look perfectly at home on the beaches of California today. At the beginning of the 20th century, though, such displays would have bordered on blasphemy. Female swimmers went to great lengths to conceal themselves at the beach. They wore voluminous bathing costumes and even made use of a peculiar Victorian contraption called the bathing machine, essentially a small wooden or canvas hut on wheels. The bather entered the machine fully dressed and donned her swimming clothes inside. Then, horses pulled the cart into the surf. The bather would disembark on the seaside, where she could take a dip without being observed from the shore. In the decades that followed, the seaside dress code loosened up. In 1907, Australian swimmer and film star Annette Kellerman, an advocate of more hydrodynamic swimwear, was charged with indecent exposure for appearing on Boston’s Revere Beach in a form fitting, sleeveless tank suit. The ensuing high-profile legal battle led beaches across the nation to relax swimwear restrictions. By 1915, American women commonly wore one-piece knitted maillots.
