Which French engineer designed the bikini first presented in Paris in 1946?

Louis Réard designed the bikini first presented in Paris in 1946.

Réard was an automotive engineer who took over his mother's lingerie business and experimented with swimwear. He unveiled his two-piece design at the Piscine Molitor swimming pool in Paris on 5 July 1946. The outfit was so revealing that Réard reportedly hired Micheline Bernardini, a casino dancer, to model it because professional fashion models refused.

Réard named the garment the “bikini,” borrowing the name of the Bikini Atoll, where the United States had conducted an atomic bomb test days earlier. The name suggested that the swimsuit would create an explosive reaction. Designer Jacques Heim had marketed another two-piece swimsuit as the “Atome” shortly before Réard's launch, but Réard's name became the enduring one.

The bikini was not immediately accepted everywhere, and some beaches and pageants restricted it. Its popularity grew substantially during the 1950s and 1960s, helped by film stars, magazines, and changing attitudes toward women's swimwear.