Louis Réard

Louis Réard
Born(1896-10-10)10 October 1896
Lille, France
Died16 September 1984(1984-09-16) (aged 87)
Lausanne, Switzerland
Occupations
  • Automobile engineer
  • fashion designer
Known forInventor of the modern bikini
SpouseMarcelle Réard

Louis Réard (French pronunciation: [lwi ʁeaʁ]; 10 October 1896 – 16 September 1984) was a French automobile engineer and fashion designer who introduced the modern two-piece bikini in July 1946.[1] He ran a swimsuit store in Paris where he sold bikinis for 40 years.

Early life

Louis Réard was born on 10 October 1896 in Lille, France to Dominique Réard and Marie Dufrenoy.

Launching the bikini

Réard was an automotive engineer who took over his mother's lingerie business in about 1940 and became a clothing designer near the Folies Bergère in Paris.[2][3] While on beaches in Saint-Tropez, he noticed women rolling up the edges of their swimsuits to get a better tan,[2] which inspired him to design a swimsuit with the midriff exposed.

In May 1946, French fashion designer Jacques Heim produced a two-piece swimsuit that he named the Atome, which he advertised as the world's "smallest bathing suit."[4][5] The bottom of Heim's swimsuit was just large enough to cover the wearer's navel. To promote his new design, Heim hired skywriters to fly above the Mediterranean resort advertising the Atome as "the world’s smallest bathing suit."[6][7][8]

Réard quickly produced his own swimsuit design, which was a string bikini consisting of four triangles made from only 30 square inches (194 cm2) of fabric printed with a newspaper pattern.[2] When Réard sought a model to wear his design at its debut presentation, none of the usual models would wear the suit, so he hired 18-year-old nude dancer Micheline Bernardini from the Casino de Paris to model it.[9]

He introduced his new swimsuit, which he named the bikini, to the media and public in Paris on 5 July 1946 at Piscine Molitor,[10] a popular public pool in Paris at the time.[11][12] He introduced his design four days after the first test of a nuclear weapon at Bikini Atoll. The event received widespread coverage in the press, and Réard hoped for the same with his design.[13][14] It was marketed with the slogan, "The bikini, the first anatomical bomb" (la première bombe anatomique).[15][16]

Réard hired his own skywriters to fly over the French Riviera advertising his design as "smaller than the smallest bathing suit in the world."[6] Photographs of Micheline Bernardini and articles about the event were widely carried by the press. The International Herald Tribune alone ran nine stories on the event.[17] Fourteen days later, Réard applied for a patent for his design, and was awarded patent number 19431.[13]

While two-piece swimsuits had been available since at least the 1910s, Réard's bikini was especially controversial because it was the first to expose the wearer's navel.[18]

Marketing of the bikini

The bikini was very popular, especially among men, and Bernardini received some 50,000 fan letters.[11] Although Heim's design was the first worn on the beach, Réard's design and his name for it stuck in the public consciousness.[2] Réard's business soared, and in advertisements he kept the bikini mystique alive by declaring that a two-piece suit wasn't a genuine bikini "unless it could be pulled through a wedding ring."[11]

As a further booster for sales, Réard commissioned coachbuilder Henri Chapron to build an extravagant "road yacht" by converting a Packard V8 car into a mock luxury cabin cruiser complete with a cockpit, portholes, an anchor, a signal mast, and other nautical regalia. The car went on advertising parades and followed the Tour de France in the early 1950s, with a crew of bikini-clad girls, causing quite a sensation.[19]

Later life and death

Réard eventually opened a bikini shop in Paris and sold swimsuits for 40 years.[13] In 1980, Réard moved with his wife, Marcelle Réard, from France to Lausanne, Switzerland. He died in Lausanne on 16 September 1984 at the age of 87.[20]

References

  1. ↑ "Encyclopædia Britannica's Great Inventions". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 5 January 2007. Retrieved 17 September 2008.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Westcott, Kathryn (5 June 2006). "The Bikini: Not a brief affair". BBC News. Archived from the original on 21 July 2008. Retrieved 17 September 2008.
  3. ↑ Sage, Adam (16 April 2006). "Happy birthday: the 'shocking and immoral' bikini hits 60". The Times.
  4. ↑ Cole, Thomas G. II. "(The) Bikini: EmBodying the Bomb". Genders Journal. Archived from the original on 1 September 2011.
  5. ↑ "The Bikini: One of Man's Greatest Inventions". CBS News. 2 July 2006. Archived from the original on 20 September 2008. Retrieved 17 September 2008.
  6. 1 2 "Swimsuit Trivia – The Surprising History of the Bikini". Swimsuit-style.com. Archived from the original on 9 March 2009. Retrieved 3 December 2011.
  7. ↑ Cocozza, Paula (10 June 2006). "A little piece of history". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 27 September 2008.
  8. ↑ "The Bikini Turns 60, 1946 to 2006: 60 Years of Bikini Bathing Beauties". Lilith E-Zine. Archived from the original on 9 September 2016. Retrieved 29 August 2013.
  9. ↑ Rosebush, Judson. "Michele Bernadini: The First Bikini". Bikini Science. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 19 September 2007.
  10. ↑ David Louis Gold (2009). Studies in Etymology and Etiology: With Emphasis on Germanic, Jewish, Romance and Slavic Languages. Universidad de Alicante. pp. 99–. ISBN 978-84-7908-517-9. Archived from the original on 28 May 2013.
  11. 1 2 3 Bikini Introduced Archived 19 April 2009 at the Wayback Machine, This Day in History, History Channel
  12. ↑ Hoover, Elizabeth D. (5 July 2006). "60 Years of Bikinis". American Heritage Inc. Archived from the original on 9 September 2007. Retrieved 13 November 2007.
  13. 1 2 3 Wiesner, Maria (5 July 2016). "70 Jahre Bikini: Vier Dreiecke und etwas Schnur". FAZ.NET (in German). Retrieved 17 May 2018.
  14. ↑ "Operation Crossroads: Fact Sheet". Department of the Navy—Naval History and Heritage Command. Archived from the original on 24 October 2012. Retrieved 13 August 2013.
  15. ↑ Le Garrec, Pascale (9 August 2020). "L'histoire du maillot de bain. Le Bikini, une « bombe anatomique »". Ouest-France (in French). Retrieved 24 July 2026.
  16. ↑ Owen, Lara (13 May 2025). "'Biggest discovery since the atomic bomb': Celebrating 80 years of the bikini". The Independent. Retrieved 24 July 2026.
  17. ↑ Mitchell, Claudia A.; Reid-Walsh, Jacqueline (2008). Girl Culture an Encyclopedia. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. p. 82. ISBN 978-0-313-08444-7.
  18. ↑ Rubin, Sylvia (2 July 2006). "Fashion shocker of '46: the naked belly button / But the bikini wasn't a hit until Sixties". San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on 28 July 2013. Retrieved 19 August 2013.
  19. ↑ Le Bikini Archived 2 February 2014 at the Wayback Machine
  20. ↑ "Louis Reard, Engineer, Dies; Designed the Bikini in 1946". The New York Times. 18 September 1984. Retrieved 17 September 2008.
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