In 2017, you can feel free to wear any shape of swimsuit you like without much of a reaction.
Some women proudly show off their bodies in tiny bikinis that barely cover anything, while others opt for more conservative styles.
The point is, there are more kinds of swimsuits under the sun than anyone can wear in their life. However, it wasn’t always that way.
The first bikini didn’t arrive on the scene until after WWII, in 1946.
In the 1920s and ’30s, swimwear was considerably more modest than anything we’d take to the beach today.
Both swimsuits and popular opinion regarding propriety have come a long way since the turn of the last century. Still, you’d be surprised to know that the bikini caused quite the sensation when designer Louis Réard released the first images of the skimpy style back in the day.
Scroll through to see how the very first bikini measures up to today’s standards.
In 1946, automobile engineer turned swimsuit designer Louis Réard debuted a design that would send shockwaves through the war-torn world.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the swimsuit was made of cloth with a newspaper design. It was named after the Bikini Atoll, which was the site of nuclear testing.
Micheline Bernardini was the first model brave enough to pose publicly in the design.
Louis struggled to find a model willing to try on the skimpy ensemble (which featured a G-string back) before finally meeting the practical Micheline, who had no qualms about wearing the suit.
According to the Smithsonian, Louis famously claimed that a two-piece wasn’t a true bikini “unless it could be pulled through a wedding ring.”
Of course, when the photo of Louis’ design was recently shared on Twitter as “the world’s first bikini,” users felt the need to point out that the Romans and other ancient societies had it all figured out a long time ago.
However, the newspaper-print number was the first two-piece to be called a bikini, and one of the first times a woman’s belly button was openly exposed in public in modern times.
Here is an example of some more modest swimsuit worn in the 1940s.
Most women would wear a small bathing dress to the beach, which might sometimes expose a strip of rib cage.
While still adorable, swimming with all that cloth seems a little much for modern standards.
Women in Europe were faster to adopt the two-piece look. Italian and French women were wearing it by the late 1940s.
And the design kept traveling.
Indonesian film actress Nurnaningsih poses in a bikini in this photo taken around 1955, proving that the idea of a skimpier swimsuit was making its way around the world.
Here is another photo taken in the 1950s. You can tell by the men’s mixed reactions that they still didn’t know quite what to make of the revealing style.
The bikini caused worldwide furor among people who considered the swimsuit too skimpy to be worn in public.
Despite the scandal caused by the bikini, almost every fashionable girl was wearing the suit by the 1960s.
It quickly became associated with the lush, romantic European style of the time. Film sirens even wore it in classic movies, like Brigitte Bardot in And God Created Woman (1956) and the Beach Party franchise (1963 to 1968).
By the 1970s, bikinis looked no different than many of the ones we wear today. In fact, this looks even smaller than anything I currently own.
Did you know about the fascinating history of the bikini?
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