BIKINI

In 1946, French designer Louis Réard unveiled a two-piece swimsuit at the Piscine Molitor, a popular swimming pool in Paris. Parisian showgirl Micheline Bernardini modeled the new fashion, which Réard dubbed the “bikini”. Made out of a scant 30 inches of fabric, Réard promoted his creation as “smaller than the world’s smallest bathing suit.” He named the swimsuit after the Bikini Atoll, where the first public test of a nuclear bomb had just taken place only four days earlier that week. Over the next 12 years, a total of 23 nuclear devices were detonated on Bikini Atoll by the United States government.