Micro Bikini

First up, well run through a short history of the bikini (no sniggering at the back, please) and see how we arrive at the micro bikini.

The two-piece swimsuit we know today as the bikini has only been marketed and sold as such for 60 years. But archaeologists have discovered Minoan wall paintings from 1600 B.C. and Roman mosaics from 300 A.D. that show the bikini, so the ancients were livin it up! Still, it is the debut of the modern bikini in 1946 and its later modifications that truly define the swimsuit.

The bikini was invented and launched by two French designers: Jacques Heim and Louis Reard. Heim was a swimsuit designer who had created a two-piece suit to be sold in his beach shop in Cannes. He marketed the swimsuit as the atome, (named for its small size and meant to be compared with the atom, the smallest particle of matter known). No doubt, it was an outrageously tiny swimsuit.

The same year, Reard was creating his own similar, two-piece swimsuit. He named and marketed his swimsuit as the bikini, claiming that it was smaller than the smallest bathing suit in the world. Reard christened his swimsuit the bikini in honor of experimental atomic bombs...