Sun Out, Skin Out! The Radical Fashioning of Bikinis

In the society of today, bikinis are the norm. They can be seen at every corner of a beach or quite simply when a speck of sunshine crawls out of the sky. How exactly did we get to this point?

Diana Vreeland, a legendary fashion editor with her name etched in the vault of fashion history. Diana was a visionary, never scared to take risks. "Mrs Vreeland’s biggest contribution to Harper’s Bazaar was certainly imagination and a very original point of view. She simply didn’t think like other people,” explains Barbara Slifka, a former fashion editor at Harper's Bazaar.

After World War 2 came peace and what Diana Vreeland describes as the beginning. “Bikinis were the biggest thing since the atom bomb. America wasn’t ready for it yet but I’m a reporter, I know news when I see it.” The term Bikini had only been coined a year prior by Louis Reard in 1946 who named it after a bomb site called Bikini Atoll. However, there was nothing innovative about the introduction of bikinis. You only need to research ancient history to discover that bikinis' design and idea is nothing new. What was innovative was the naming of it.

Ancient bikini girls: Mosaic from Sicily, Italy, 4th century CE, North African.

Soon after spotting the bikini on the french riviera in 1946, Mrs. Vreeland had American sportswear designer Carolyn Schnurer copy the bikini in green and white mallinson rayon. It appeared in the Harper's Bazaar 1947 May issue in a spread titled The Bare Season. The spreads also served as an educational tool for skin tanning. It was an extremely radical move because the excessive exposure of skin was not generally accepted during the time and had never been seen in an American fashion magazine. In response to the shocked critics, Diana Vreeland said, “with an attitude like that you’ll keep civilization back a thousand years.” This was the first picture of a bikini to be published in an American magazine.

To give context to how radical doing this was, by the early 1950s, the bikini was banned from being worn in public places in countries such as Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Australia.

Model wearing a bikini designed by Carolyn Schnurer for the Harper's Bazaar 1947 May Issue. Photography by Toni Frissell.

The first published bikini in a fashion magazine is one of many Diana Vreeland contributions to fashion publishing. It highlights her ability to stay ahead of the curve at all times. In 1955 she made fashion history with her long-standing collaborator Richard Avedon by setting the couture-gowned models in the midst of a circus. The most memorable of those images, "Dovima With Elephants," shows the most famous model of her day in an ankle-length Dior gown, standing in straw and holding the trunk of an elephant with one hand while gesturing toward another.

Diana's ability to create new concepts and keep us dreaming through fashion imagery will continue to be well recognised, never to be forgotten.