Louis Réard (; 10 October 1896 – 16 September 1984) was a French automobile engineer and clothing designer who introduced the modern two-piece
bikini
A bikini is a two-piece swimsuit primarily worn by women that features one piece on top that covers the breasts, and a second piece on the bottom: the front covering the pelvis but usually exposing the navel, and the back generally covering ...
in July 1946. He opened a bikini shop and ran it for the next 40 years.
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
150px, Stanisław Julian Ignacy Ostroróg">Walery, 1927
The Folies Bergère () is a cabaret music hall in Paris, France. Located at 32 Rue Richer in the 9th Arrondissement, the Folies Bergère was built as an opera house by the arc ...
in Paris.
While on
Saint Tropez
Saint-Tropez ( , ; ) is a commune in the Var department and the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Southern France. It is west of Nice and east of Marseille, on the French Riviera, of which it is one of the best-known towns. In 2018 ...
beaches, he noticed women rolling up the edges of their swimsuits to get a better tan,
which inspired him to design a swimsuit with the
midriff exposed.
In May 1946,
Jacques Heim produced a two-piece swimsuit that he named the "Atome," which he advertised as the world's "smallest bathing suit". 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."
Réard quickly produced his own swimsuit design which was a string bikini
Many stylistic variations of the bikini have been created. A regular bikini is a two-piece swimsuit that together covers the wearer's crotch, buttocks, and breasts. Some bikini designs cover larger portions of the wearer's body while other desig ...
consisting of four triangles made from only of fabric printed with a newspaper pattern. 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.
He introduced his new swimsuit, which he named the ''bikini'', to the media and public in Paris on 5 July 1946 at Piscine Molitor, a popular public pool in Paris at the time.[Bikini Introduced]
, This Day in History, ''History Channel
History (formerly and commonly known as the History Channel) is an American pay television television broadcaster, network and the flagship channel of A&E Networks, a joint venture between Hearst Communications and the Disney General Entertainme ...
''
He introduced his design four days after the first test of a nuclear weapon at the Bikini Atoll
Bikini Atoll ( or ; Marshallese language, Marshallese: , , ), known as Eschscholtz Atoll between the 19th century and 1946, is a coral reef in the Marshall Islands consisting of 23 islands surrounding a central lagoon. The atoll is at the no ...
. The newspapers were full of news about it and Reard hoped for the same with his design. Not to be outdone by Heim, Réard hired his own skywriters to fly over the French Riviera
The French Riviera, known in French as the (; , ; ), is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France. There is no official boundary, but it is considered to be the coastal area of the Alpes-Maritimes department, extending fr ...
advertising his design as "smaller than the smallest bathing suit in the world." Photographs of Bernardini and articles about the event were widely carried by the press. The ''International Herald Tribune
The ''International Herald Tribune'' (''IHT'') was a daily English-language newspaper published in Paris, France, for international English-speaking readers. It published under the name ''International Herald Tribune'' starting in 1967, but its ...
'' alone ran nine stories on the event. Fourteen days later, Réard applied for a patent for his design, and was awarded patent number 19431.
Two piece swimsuits had been available for at least since the 1930s, but Réard's bikini was controversial because for the first time the wearer's navel
The navel (clinically known as the umbilicus; : umbilici or umbilicuses; also known as the belly button or tummy button) is a protruding, flat, or hollowed area on the abdomen at the attachment site of the umbilical cord.
Structure
The u ...
was exposed.
Marketing of the bikini
The bikini was very popular, especially among men, and Bernardini received some 50,000 fan letters. Heim's design was the first worn on the beach, but Réard's name for it stuck in the public consciousness. 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."
As a further booster for sales, Réard commissioned carbody specialist Henri Chapron
Henri Chapron (30 December 1886 - 14 May 1978) was a prominent French automobile coachbuilder. His coachworks, carrosserie, created in 1919, was located in the Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret.
History
Chapron was born in Nouan-le-Fuzelier (Sologn ...
to build an extravagant "road yacht" by converting a Packard
Packard (formerly the Packard Motor Car Company) was an American luxury automobile company located in Detroit, Michigan. The first Packard automobiles were produced in 1899, and the last Packards were built in South Bend, Indiana, in 1958.
One ...
V8 car into a mock luxury cabin cruiser complete with cockpit, portholes, anchor, signal mast and other nautical regalia. The car went on advertising parades and followed the Tour de France
The Tour de France () is an annual men's multiple-stage cycle sport, bicycle race held primarily in France. It is the oldest and most prestigious of the three Grand Tour (cycling), Grand Tours, which include the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a ...
cycliste in the early 1950s, with a crew of bikini clad girls, causing quite a sensation in period parochial France.
Later life
Réard afterwards opened a bikini shop in Paris and sold swimsuits for 40 years. In 1980, Réard moved with his wife, Marcelle Réard, from France to Lausanne
Lausanne ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest List of towns in Switzerland, city of the Swiss French-speaking Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Vaud, in Switzerland. It is a hilly city situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, about halfway bet ...
, Switzerland
Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...
. He died in Lausanne in 1984 at the age of 87.
Notes
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Reard, Louis
1897 births
1984 deaths
People from Lille
French fashion designers
Bikinis
Date of birth unknown