Anniversary

On this day in 1946, Micheline Bernardini, modeled a skimpy two-piece swimsuit at a press conference held at a public swimming pool in Paris. The swimsuit’s designer, Louis Réard, called it a “bikini” after the Pacific atoll where the United States had recently conducted a nuclear weapons test.

Bernardini was an 18-year-old nude dancer from the Casino de Paris, not a professional runway model. Réard had been unable to find a runway model willing to pose in his little creation.