A bikini is generally a women's two-piece swimsuit. The design is simple: two triangles of fabric on top cover the woman's breasts and two triangles of fabric on the bottom cover the groin and the buttocks, leaving the woman's midriff exposed. What distinguishes the bikini from other swimsuits is its brevity. The size of the panty can range from full coverage to a revealing thong or g-string design.
The modern bikini was introduced by French engineer Louis Réard and separately by fashion designer Jacques Heim in Paris in 1946. Many western countries declared it illegal and Vatican declared it sinful. Popularized by filmstars like Brigitte Bardot and Ursula Andress it became common in most western countries by mid 1960s.
Further variants were added to the bikini family of beachwears and bathing costumes, contributing to the popular lexicon a variety of -kinis and -inis: Monokini, Microkini, Tankini, Trikini, Pubikini, Bandeaukini, Skirtini and Sling bikini. A man's brief swimsuit may also be referred to as a bikini. A variety of men's and women's underwear is also known as bikini underwear.
The modern bikini was introduced by French engineer Louis Réard and separately by fashion designer Jacques Heim in Paris in 1946. Réard was a car engineer but by 1946 he was running his mother's lingerie boutique near Les Folies Bergère in Paris. Heim was working on a new kind of beach costume. It comprised two pieces, the bottom large enough to cover its wearer's navel. In May 1946, he advertised it as the world's "smallest bathing suit". Réard sliced the top off the bottoms and advertised it as "smaller than the smallest swimsuit". The idea struck him when he saw women rolling up their beachwear to get a better tan.
Réard could not find a model to wear his design. He ended up hiring Micheline Bernardini, a nude dancer from the Casino de Paris. That bikini, a string bikini with a g-string back of 30 square inches (200 cm2) of cloth with newspaper type print, was introduced on July 5 at Piscine Molitor, a public pool in Paris. The bikini was a hit, especially among men, and Bernardini received 50,000 letters. Heim's design was the first worn on the beach, but the design was given its name by Réard. Réard's business soared. In advertisements he kept the bikini alive by declaring that a two-piece wasn't a genuine bikini "unless it could be pulled through a wedding ring." French newspaper Le Figaro wrote, "People were craving the simple pleasures of the sea and the sun. For women, wearing a bikini signaled a kind of second liberation. There was really nothing sexual about this. It was instead a celebration of freedom and a return to the joys in life.
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