There are many courageous women of yesteryear who laid the groundwork for the feminine ideals of today. Their contributions can never be underestimated and yet sadly they are often forgotten. Let's take a brief look at the history of bathing attire and at one such woman who challenged the decency laws of the day by daring to wear a one-piece suit.
One of the earliest forms of bathing attire appears on ancient wall murals in Pompeii depicting Greek women wearing two-piece bikini style suits. The attire didn't resurface until the mid-1800s when the advent of railroads sent Victorians flocking to beaches and resorts. Before this, proper seaside wear consisted of a white cambric or pale pink muslim gown over pantalets trimmed to match the dress. 1860 saw heavy flannel "paletot" dresses paired with bloomer styled turkish pants. In 1890, women wore black knee-length wool dresses with puffed sleeves and sailor collars over drawers or bloomers. Long black stockings and lace-up slippers completed the ensemble and ensured that like it's predecessors, no part of the body would be left exposed. By 1910, women were no longer content to simply bathe or jump waves and became more active in water sports alongside the men. The new one-piece suit allowed for freedom of movement and more sun exposure. 
This era was ushered in by a woman bold enough to wear the shocking swimsuit that would have her arrested for indecent exposure. Annette Marie Sarah Kellerman was born in Marrickville, NSW, Australia on July 6, 1887. Infantile paralysis required her to wear steel braces from an early age so her parents enrolled her in swimming classes. By the age of 15, she had overcome her disability to win her first swimming competition and she went on to set Australian records. At 18, she became the first woman to try to swim across the English Channel, remaining unsuccessful after three attempts.
Kellerman performed an aquatic act in a glass tank that featured high diving, stunts and the underwater dancing that was to become the sport of synchronized swimming. Her act debuted in Melbourne and continued on to London in 1905 and New York, Chicago and Boston in 1907. In London, forbidden to show her legs, she invented the "unitard" by sewing black stockings onto a boy's short racing swimsuit. In America she left her legs bare and was arrested on Revere Beach in Boston. She declared to the judge, "I want to swim...I can't swim wearing more stuff than you hang on a clothes line." Agreeing with Kellerman, the judge dismissed the case. She was dubbed the "Diving Venus" owing to her physical resemblance to the Venus de Milo.
This one-piece suit became known as the maillot pantaloon. It already existed but was only used as a pin-up costume in risqué fake beach studio photos. Kellerman was the the first woman to actually wear one in public. Her fame soared with her arrest and she went to Hollywood in 1909, starring in a 20 minute Vitagraph film showcasing her aquatic act. Several films followed but her most famous role was in A Daughter of the Gods (1916). Shot in Jamaica, it was the first film to cost over a million dollars. It was a box office hit for one very simple reason; the attractive Kellerman was a nude goddess. Though Andrea Munson was the first woman to appear nude in a movie, not only was Kellerman more famous but the film was a huge production viewed by far larger audiences. 
Ahead of her time, she wrote several mail order booklets about swimming and personal health/beauty care. She was a lifelong vegetarian and owned a health food store in Long Beach, California until 1970 when Kellerman returned to Australia where she died in 1975 in Southport, Australia. Hollywood remembered her in the 1952 film "Million Dollar Mermaid" in which she was portrayed by MGM sensation, Esther Williams.
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| First bikini - Micheline Bernardini 1946 |
From here on, bathing attire would only decrease in size with the arms, legs and décolleté receiving more exposure. New fabrics and styles provided practical swimwear and by the 1940s the bathing suit was the norm for Hollywood pin-ups. The bikini, invented by Louis Réard, officially debuted July 5, 1946, at a public pool in Paris. The model, Micheline Bernardini, reportedly received 50,000 fan letters after her appearance! Réard was an automobile engineer by trade who ran his mother's shoe store. He and a rival designer competed to see who could make the world's smallest bathing suit and Réard came up with the idea at the beach when he saw women roll up their swimsuits to get a better tan. He declared a two-piece suit wasn't a real bikini "unless it could be pulled through a wedding ring." Incidentally, he named his creation after the South Pacific island, Bikini Atoll, where an atomic bomb was then being tested. He figured the shock effect of the bikini would equal that of the bombings in Japan the year before.
One has to wonder what Kellerman would think of the thongs and string bikinis today. Would she be alarmed by the topless beaches? I doubt it. When she began her career, women's competitive swimming didn't exist. I think she would beam at the women who have broken down the barriers that once restricted them from participating in men's sports. We've certainly come a long way from bloomers and no other garment in the history of fashion can truly boast less is more.
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