It was in 1946 that the world first came to hear of a coral atoll in the Marshall Islands called Bikini. The following year, French couturier Louis Réard borrowed the name and applied it to a bathing costume for women. Breaking decades of boring conformity, Réard dared to ‘undress’ women’s bodies in order to better emphasise what remained clothed – albeit in tiny wisps of material. By accepting the bikini as popular beachwear, women also found themselves thinking differently about their bodies. An ideal of perfection was repeatedly reinforced by the appearance of such stars as Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot, and Ursula Andress on the cinema screen, all of whom were featured in bikinis that accentuated their own gloriously curvaceous contours. More than a bathing costume, the bikini made its own contribution to the sexual revolution during the 1970s, and, even more so, to the changing relationship between men and women in general.
This book investigates the history of the bikini as a way of noting the change in society’s perception of women. Furthermore, it examines how women have taken control of the way they look and laid claim to their own sexual equality. Discover here, through a wealth of photographs, this progression of femininity, which spans more than 50 years.