The Bikini... Let's Get Serious

I have lived long enough to know that some people do not perceive the bikini as a serious topic of discussion.  For many of those folks that perhaps grew up in a land locked state, or country, without the warm sand of a beach to seduce them, they just don't get it.  To these people, the bikini is not a fashion, or lifestyle statement, it is merely a drooling over of soft porn. So, I say that for those of you who feel this way about the bikini,  I kindly advise you to, "click off. " 

This discussion is not about all that.  It is about what a bikini does for a soul, be it a goddess of fashion, or of a child of nature. And who better to understand that than the late, but forever wonderful, Diana Vreeland, the then editor of Harper's Bazaar magazine, who brought the bikini into the American girl's life in 1947?   ( The Diana Vreeland website.)

Diana Vreeland Spots the Bikini in St. Tropez
& Features it in HARPER'S BAAZAR

Ms. Vreeland, who later went on to become the editor of VOGUE magazine, called the bikini the "swoonsuit,"  that exposed, “everything about a girl except her mother’s maiden name,” and claimed it to be,  “the most important thing since the atom bomb.”  Oh for God's sake, of course she was right.  She was correct...more than correct! 

The timing of the unveiling of the bikini was impeccably perfect.  It came at the dawning of an era when American women were, "feeling their oats," as my mother used to say.  They were becoming more independent, more free in their feminine expression and their sexuality.  I dare to say that it was the MOST important fashion statement of its time!  Suddenly, unlike my mother, I, as a young woman, was able to stroll along the shoreline in the smallest piece of clothing that 'd everI owned and feel absolutely wonderful about myself.

Thank you Diana!

 

Thank You Veruschka!

 

 

And last, but never least...



Thank you Miss Bardot!

  ~C.