The bare facts
Juliet Nicolson reflects on costume dramas The first grown-up I saw with no clothes on was Bridget Bardot. It was 1962 and my brother Adam and I were staying in the small fishing village of St Tropez. We were mucking about, looking through our binoculars at all the boats. Suddenly we saw a naked woman. Actually she wasn’t entirely naked; the top half of her blue gingham bikini was missing, but lower on down and just visible a wisp of material was still in place. In retrospect my introduction to the female curve has never been outclassed, and I suppose my brother might, if he dared, say the same. He might also admit to reaching some understanding at that moment of why God Created Woman and of how the French do sexiness better than anyone.
Illustrations of two-piece swimming costumes have been found on Greek urns dating back to 1400 BC, but the bikini proper celebrates its 60th birthday on 5 July this year. Louis Réard (a Frenchman of course) named his garment in reflection of its potentially explosive nature, after Bikini Atoll, the tiny Marshall Island in the Pacific which was then a site for testing nuclear weapons. Reard, a former car engineer, persuaded Michele Bernadini, a stripper from the Casino de Paris, to be photographed modelling a garment that he proudly boasted was ‘small enough to be pulled through a wedding ring’. A directive was immediately issued from Catholic countries outlawing the bikini in public and Miss World contestants were banned from wearing it, as it was deemed a potential health hazard to the judges. In 1954 Vogue lost its nerve for a full-on endorsement and pictured the suit worn with a matching jacket. As late as 1956 the US magazine Modern Girl declared it ‘inconceivable that any girl with tact and decency would ever wear such a thing’. But that same year came BB with And God Created Woman, followed in 1960 by that itsy-bitsy polka-dot song, and the craze that launched a thousand bodies had begun.
The discreet Victorian and Edwardian bathing machines allowed the bashful bather encased from neck to thigh in a costume that weighed 20lb when wet — to slip unnoticed beneath the waves, helped into the water by thrillingly muscular attendants. But ever since Coco Chanel made her first couture swimsuit in clingy jersey with long sleeves, every major designer, including Armani, Prada, Gucci and Pucci, has produced an annual swimwear collection. A shop in Chelsea, Biondi, is even offering London’s first madeto-measure swimsuit service. One customer recently ordered a bridal bikini (in the precise shade of white that matched her Jimmy Choos) with mother of pearl trim, her newly married name sewn in Swarovski crystals across her Lycra-clad bottom. Biondi fulfils a counselling role too. They can construct a suit to conceal unsightly surgical scars, or act as a heaven-sent answer to the woman ‘blessed’ with a double H bust size who was reluctant to be seen on the beach ‘wearing her granny’s bra’.
My personal all-time favourite bathing suit came from a shop in the King’s Road called Flip. It was part of a 1950s consignment that had been found abandoned in an old American warehouse and was made of rose-patterned glazed chintz. It might easily have come from the curtain department at Peter Jones, as it closely resembled a ruched blind and was a blessing for the overly endowed. You could shove excess bosom in amongst the gathered part and it seemed to vanish altogether. Bliss.
Apparently even supermodels can find buying a swimsuit ‘a traumatic experience’, according to Sophie and Pandora of Heidi Klein’s ‘one-stop holiday shop’, the first boutique to provide a full pre-holiday beau tifying service, buffing your body so it goes with your swimwear. Here customers regularly spend over £1,000 a time on bikinis, seduced in part by the clever lighting in the changing room, which makes everyone look deliciously sun-kissed. One customer recently bought a slinky Melissa Odabash halter-neck suit in ten colours, twice: one set for the Hamptons house and another for the French villa. Cheap copies of their brown polka-dot bikini that Jemima Khan was photographed looking sensational in last summer is a smash hit this season for Topshop, although sadly bodies to match are not available.
Biondi, 55b Old Church Street, London SW3. Tel: 0207 349 1111.
The Perfect Summer: Dancing into Shadow in 1911 by Juliet Nicolson (John Murray, £20).
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