The first true Bikini - Micheline Bernardini

Micheline Bernardini modelling the first true bikini.

According to the official version, the modern bikini was invented by French engineer Louis Réard and fashion designer Jacques Heim in Paris in 1946 and introduced on July 5 at a fashion show at Piscine Molitor in Paris. It was a string bikini with a g-string back. It was named after Bikini Atoll, the site of nuclear weapon tests a few days earlier in the Marshall Islands, on the reasoning that the burst of excitement it would cause would be like the nuclear device. However, women in Paris were wearing such items of clothing as the microkini one year before the bikini was "invented". This fact is documented with pictures in the July 16, 1945 issue of Life. Film of holidaymakers in Germany in the 1930's show women wearing two-piece bathing suits. Anyone who has seen the elaborately and lavishly assembled Busby Berkeley film spectacle, "Footlight Parade" of 1932 (James Cagney, Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler, Joan Blondell, etc.), would have been treated to a stunning aquachoreography that profusely featured what could only be regarded as bikini swimwear. They were to be seen again a year later in "Gold Nuggets of 1933".

Of course the magazine article did not attach the name "bikini" to the swimsuit. At that time the atomic bomb test was a year in the future and virtually no one had ever heard of Bikini Atoll. The article instead spoke of the "French Bathing Suits". But although the name had not yet been adopted, the swimsuits that the Parisian women were wearing are clearly recognizable as bikinis in style and coverage.

Coincidentally, the date of publication of the magazine, July 16, 1945, was the very same day that the first atomic bomb was detonated in the desert outside Alamogordo, New Mexico.

Bernard of Hollywood's Pin-Ups