Today the bikini is the most popular type of women’s bathing suit. Thousands of women wear different styles of this ultra modern beachwear, but most of them have no idea where its name comes from.

The word bikini comes from the Latin bi, meaning “two,” and kini, meaning “square inches of Lycra”. The two-piece swimsuit was designed by Louis Reard (ray-YARD) in 1946 and was named after the explosion near small islands in the Pacific known as the “Bikini Atoll”. The bikini soon acquired a reputation as a tongue-in-cheek “explosive” garment and had a roaring success. The first movie star appearing in a bikini in the media was Brigitte Bardot -  in And God Created Woman she frolics in a provocative sun wear driving men mad.

Today the bikini is worn by the hottest Hollywood divas, representing a pop-culture sex symbol. Modern ladies have no qualms about exposing their bodies and the conservative bikini of the ‘60s was replaced by a number of very revealing styles.

Actually, the bikini is a two-piece swimsuit that looks like women’s underwear made of special fabrics. That’s why there are as many types of the bikini as of underwear. First of all, there are different designs of a bikini bottom. It can range from the very revealing as thongs or g-strings to more modest as briefs and square-cut shorts. Bikini tops can also be of various styles, for instance there halter necks and push-ups, full cups and minimizers, padded and unpadded tops. So, the main types of the bikini are the following:

1.  Tankini. It is a type of the bikini, which consists of a tank top and any type of a bikini bottom.
2.  String bikini. It is a reduced type of a traditional bikini that includes three small triangles connected by string. It is the sexiest bikini style that is the result of the modern trend towards reduction which still continuous and promises more sizzling designs.
3. In recent years, some women prefer topless bathing. They wear only the lower part of a bikini and call this swimwear a monokini. Sometimes a monokini with a sun hat is jokingly called a bikini, as an outfit consisting of two pieces.

These are only the most popular types of the bikini worn today, but swimwear manufacturers keep on inventing new designs and modern tiny beachwear is getting even tinier every day.

Find a high-quality swimming costume from Milavitsa at our online lingerie store.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 25th, 2006 at 4:09 pm and is filed under Swimwear, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.