When Reard planned to showcase his swimsuit creation at a Paris fashion show, he was unable to find any Parisian models who would be seen in the skimpy garment.
Finally, he hired Micheline Bernardini, a model who also worked as a dancer in a Paris nightclub to debut the bikini to the fashion world.
Only a few years after the introduction of the bikini in 1946, fashion designers began to create new innovations to keep their swimsuit a step above other swimsuits.
Such innovations included a bikini constructed entirely of red hair, a bikini with propellers attached to the bra cups, and a bikini constructed solely of porcupine quills. Interestingly, these bikinis did not retain widespread popularity.
The bikini was originally shunned in many countries throughout the world and took quite some time to gain in popularity.
In fact, the wearing of bikinis was actually banned at the 1951 Miss World pageant.
The release of the popular song, “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” in 1960 rocketed the bikini swimsuit into a position of popular culture icon.
As society began to soften somewhat on the bikini in the 1960s, a number of beach-themed movies served to popularize the bikini among teenage girls.
In 1964, the bikini made it to the cover of Sports Illustrated for the first time.
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