Louis Réard

Louis Réard (French pronunciation: [lwi ʁeaʁ]; 10 October 1896 – 16 September 1984) was a French automobile engineer and fashion designer who introduced the modern two-piece bikini in July 1946. He ran a swimsuit store in Paris where he sold bikinis for 40 years.

Early life

Louis Réard was born on 10 October 1896 in Lille, France to Dominique Réard and Marie Dufrenoy.

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 in Paris. While on beaches in Saint-Tropez, 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, French fashion designer 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 consisting of four triangles made from only 30 square inches (194 cm2) 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. He introduced his design four days after the first test of a nuclear weapon at Bikini Atoll.