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.
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Now this is a reason to have a national holiday. Forget the signing of the Declaration of Independence . We should celebrate the bikini.
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