Bathing Suit

Until the 18th century bathing and swimming were done privately or with other women in bathhouses so swimsuits weren’t really considered. Instead women bathed in the nude.

In 1751 Englishman Benjamin Beale invented a bathing machine - like a hut on large wheels - to be pulled in and out of the sea by horses. It enabled the fashionable to enter the water discreetly when bathing in beach resorts. He or she changed inside before opening the door at the far end to descend some steps, where someone would be standing in the sea to ensure the bather's safety. 

In the 18th century women started wearing "bathing gowns" in the water; these were long dresses made from canvas and flannel that would not become transparent when wet, with weights sewn into the hems so that they would not rise up in the water. 

These “bathing gowns” didn’t last forever. In the mid-1800s, bloomer swimsuits, with full skirts and wide legs that cinched, gained popularity.

Australian-born swimmer Annette Kellerman caused public outrage in 1909 by appearing in public on a California beach wearing the first one-piece bathing suit.

American 1920s woman's bathing suit

It was against the law in New York, until 1936, for either men or women to wear topless bathing suits.

The American actress Betty Grable, dubbed ‘the girl with the golden legs’, was America’s most famous ‘pin-up’ during World War II. Three million copies of a 1943 photo of Grable in a bathing suit (see below) were distributed in the Forties, mainly to GIs. The pose came about because the photographer was trying to hide her pregnancy bump.

The modern term "bikini" for a particular bathing suit design was first used by its creator, French automobile engineer Louis Reard. He named it "the bikini" as he predicted the garment would be as explosive as the atomic bomb that had been tested four days earlier on the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

Reard hired a skywriting plane to advertise his design by skywriting "Bikini -- smaller than the smallest bathing suit in the world."

As her acting career took off, Farrah Fawcett posed in her red bathing suit for a poster in 1976, and it sold a staggering 8,000,000 plus copies.

Source GoogleArts&Culture