July 5 marks the 70th anniversary of the invention of the bikini in 1946 by Paris fashion designer Louis Reard.
On the Spanish holiday island of Mallorca, a colourful display of bikinis were worn at the Palmanova beach where Spain’s famed balearic islands attract millions of tourists every year.
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Bikinis have become standard beachwear for women since the 1940s when a more permissive society allowed for women to start showing their midriff.
Reard was both an automobile engineer and clothes designer. He named the new and controversial female swimsuit after the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean where the United States was conducting testing of the atomic bomb.
His nearest competitor, Jacques Heim, released a similar swimsuit the same year and called it the “Atome.”
Due to moral codes of the time, the bikini was felt to show too much female flesh so for the presentation in 1946, Reard had to hire an infamous nude dancer, as no other model was prepared to wear it.
According to research by Global Industry Analysts, two-piece bikini sales in 2012 accounted for USD $8 billion in the United States alone. Sales are anticipated to rise to USD$19 billion in 2018.
Since the invention of the bikini, the two-piece swimsuit has developed into various incarnations such as the Unikinis, Microkini and the body covering Burqini.
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