Louis Réard

Louis Réard (* 1897 in France, † September 16, 1984 in Lausanne, Switzerland ) was a French mechanical engineer and is considered the inventor of the bikini.

Réard gave the garment its name and dared the presentation by the showgirl Micheline Bernardini on July 5, 1946 in Paris at a time when wearing a bikini was a scandal. The shocking about the new swimwear was obvious the tension between nakedness and concealment. So Réard aptly at the presentation in the pool Piscine Molitor: " The bikini is so small that it reveals everything about the wearer down to the maiden name of her mother! "

Then he allowed himself to protect under No. 19431 and the name of the new bikini swimsuit as a utility model at the French Patent Office on 18 July 1946. This protection lasted only a few years, because it quickly became the revolutionary model that showed more than covert, copied worldwide by fashion designers and accepted by the women.

First bikini

Although Réard is considered the inventor of the bikini, occupy other sources that the first version of the swimwear was born in 1940 in Germany. He was born from the creativity of postwar times when simply failed garments were sewn from a shortage of materials. At the time, called him the women " two-parter ".

Meados because Decada de 1940. Tempo difíceis na Alemanha do pós - guerra. Não havia dinheiro, nem variedade nas lojas. A Solução era usar a criatividade. As garotas sentavam - se à máquina de costura e, com pouco pano, costuravam suas peças.