Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

It's summer. Today, let's talk about bikinis. And naturally, this story will be in two parts.

So, here we go, part one.

1946, July, Paris.

Finally, for the French, a season of freedom.

Europe had just emerged from World War II, the beaches were clear, and the liberated French were ready to carry liberation a bit further.

An itsy, bitsy, teeny-weeney bit further.

How?

In the form of a woman's bathing costume.

Yeah, they did call these things costumes back then that could just about fit into a shot glass.

The bikini.

It was born at a poolside photo shoot on July 5th, 1946, a week before the steel day and in the midst of a global textile shortage. The designer, former engineer Louis Rayard,

had left automotive engineering to work in his mother's lingerie

business. In the he had he months after the armistice, he was in an arms race with another

designer to create the world's smallest swimsuit, which was kind of incredible because the

history of women's bathing costumes was by and large one of

modesty. You might even call it a cover-up. Victorian women who dared to bathe in public

did so in long smocks that were only distinguishable from their daily wear by the fact that they were dripping wet.

But hemlines slowly crept up, neckline slipped down, and sleeves retracted over the shoulder.

And when women's swimming was introduced in the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, a man named Carl Jansen

began marketing a sleeveless one-piece bathing suit

that left the legs bare, although his knitted wool garment came with a matching cap and stockings.

...