Restrained swimsuits back in style!
(The Los Angeles Time)Updated: 2007-06-04 16:40
1913
Swimwear officially becomes fashionable when Jantzen manufactures one-pieces under the slogan "the suit that changed bathing into swimming."
1914-1924
Movie producers catch on, realizing that if they make films about swimming, they can get around the censors and show women's bodies on screen. Kellerman stars in several silent pictures during the teens and 1920s, including "Neptune’s Daughter" (1914) and "Venus of the South Seas" (1924).
1930s
Although pools are popular with the nation’s elite, Hollywood puts swimming and swimwear into the public consciousness. "Footlight Parade” (1933) is the ultimate in escapist fare during the Depression.
The set for the film's 15-minute aquacade, "By a Waterfall," complete with an 80-by-40-foot swimming pool, takes up an entire soundstage. It's constructed with glass walls and a glass floor so the 100 swimmers can be filmed from every angle. Glamorous nymphs wear jeweled bathing caps that would put Prada’s turbans to shame, sparkling full-cut suits that are suggestive but not overtly sexy and diamond cuffs — always smiling as they paddle in perfect formation.
1940s and ’50s
Esther Williams, the 100-meter Olympic finalist, continues to romanticize swimming with a string of popular films, an endorsement deal with swimwear company Cole and her own swimwear label.
Pinup photography helps bring bareness to the mainstream, making it acceptable, even desirable, for women to expose more of their bodies in public.
During the postwar economic boom, swimming pools spring up in parks and motels and become jewels in the suburban lifestyle.
1960s
All too quickly, pools come to suggest something more sinister, particularly in films such as "The Graduate" and "The Swimmer," the adaptation of a John Cheever story. They become a symbol of privilege and class, isolation and complacency.
1964
Glamour girl swimwear loses its allure, too, as bikinis became smaller and smaller. Rudi Gernreich helps usher in the sexual revolution with his monokini, the idea being that women were now free to go topless. That didn't take. He also designed the first thong bikini. We know where that went.
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