Which swimsuit was introduced by Louis Reard in 1946?

The swimsuit introduced by Louis Réard in 1946 was the bikini. His version was a remarkably revealing two-piece design that exposed the wearer’s navel, making it far more controversial than earlier two-piece bathing suits.

Réard was a French engineer and clothing designer who was running his mother’s lingerie business near Paris. After seeing women roll up their swimsuits to get a better tan, he created a minimalist design made from four small fabric triangles. He unveiled it on 5 July 1946 at Paris’s Piscine Molitor.

The presentation became famous partly because professional models refused to wear the daring garment. Réard hired Micheline Bernardini, a Casino de Paris dancer, to model it. He named the swimsuit after Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, where postwar atomic-bomb tests were taking place, hoping the name would create an explosive publicity effect.

Two-piece swimsuits existed before 1946, including Jacques Heim’s “Atome,” but Réard’s design established the modern bikini and supplied the name that endured.