Many stylistic variations of the bikini have been created. A regular bikini is a two-piece swimsuit that together covers the wearer's crotch, buttocks, and breasts. Some bikini designs cover larger portions of the wearer's body while other designs provide minimal coverage. Topless variants are still sometimes considered bikinis, although they are technically not a two-piece swimsuit.
Terminology
The name bikini was originally used in the 1940s for the skimpy fashion item that first revealed the wearer's navel. However, the current fashion industry considers any two-piece swimsuit to be a bikini. Modern bikini fashions are characterized by a simple, brief design: two triangles of fabric that form a bra and cover the woman's breasts and two triangles of fabric on the bottom forming a panty cut below the navel that cover the groin in front and the buttocks in back. The amount of coverage can vary widely, from a string bikini with very little coverage to a full design with maximum coverage. A topless swimsuit may still be considered a bikini, although naturally it is no longer a two-piece swimsuit.
These derivations of the word bikini were created through inappropriate analogy with words like bilingual, bifocal and bilateral, which contain the Latin prefix "bi-" (meaning "two" in Latin), the word bikini was first back-derived as consisting of two parts, [bi + kini] by Rudi Gernreich when he designed the monokini in 1964. Later swimsuit designs like the tankini and trikini were also named based on the erroneous assumption that the "bi-" in bikini denotes a two-piece swimsuit. These new coinages falsely presumed that the back-formation [bi + kini] was purposeful.
The "-kini family" (as dubbed by author William SafireWilliam Safire, No Uncertain Terms, page 291, Simon & Schuster, 2003, ), including the "-ini sisters" (as dubbed by designer Anne ColeTrish Donnally, ""Inis" Are In", San Francisco Chronicle, 1999-05-18) has grown to include a large number of subsequent variations, often with a hilarious lexicon.Barry J. Blake, Playing with Words: Humour in the English Language, page 59, Equinox, 2007, Major stylistic variations and an array of spinoff styles include string bikini, monokini or numokini (single, top part missing), tankini (tank top, bikini bottom), camikini (camisole top and bikini bottom), hikini or hipkini, thong, slingshot or sling bikini (actually a one-piece swimsuit), minimini, teardrop, seekini (transparent bikini), microkini and granny bikini (bikini top and boy shorts bottom).David Diefendorf & James Randi (foreword), Amazing... But False!: Hundreds of "Facts" You Thought Were True, But Aren't, page 33, Sterling, 2007, In just one major fashion show in 1985, there were two-piece suits with cropped tank tops instead of the usual skimpy bandeaux, suits that are bikinis in front and one-piece behind, suspender straps, ruffles, and daring, navel-baring cutouts.Fashion Correspondent, "Swimsuits take some inspiration from the past ", Philadelphia Inquirer, 1985-11-10
Variants String bikini
A string bikini or stringkini is scantier and more revealing than a regular bikini. It gets its name from the string characteristics of its design. It consists of two triangular shaped pieces connected at the groin but not at the sides, where a thin "string" wraps around the waist connecting the two parts. String bikini tops are similar and are tied in place by the attached "string" pieces. String pieces can either be continuous or tied. A string bikini bottom can have minimal to a maximum coverage of a woman's backside.
The term string bikini first came into use in 1974. There is an urban myth that the Brazilian fashion model Rose di Primo created the first string bikini when she had to sew one with insufficient fabric available to her for a photo shoot. The first formal presentation of string bikini was done by Glen Tortorich, a public relations agent, and his wife Brandi Perret-DuJon, a fashion model, for the opening of Le Petite Centre, a shopping area in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana in 1974. Inspired by a picture of a Rio de Janeiro fashion model in an issue of Women's Wear Daily, they had local fashion designer Lapin create a string bikini for the event. Models recruited by talent agent Peter Dasigner presented it by removing fur coats by Alberto Lemon on stage. The presentation was covered by local television stations and the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper and was sent out via the wire news services of the Associated Press and United Press International.
String bikinis are one of the most popular variations of bikinis.Valerie Steele, Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion, page 121, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2005, Bikinis are also worn at the hips, but the fabric at the sides is narrower. In the string bikini, it disappears altogether to leave the waistband as a "string". The rear coverage of the bikini is not as full as with the brief. Bikini is the most widely worn style among women worldwide. The tied strings can accidentally come undone leading to a wardrobe malfunction, as happened to Miss Guárico at the Miss Venezuela 2008 beauty pageant.
Monokini
A monokini, more commonly referred to as a topless swimsuit and sometimes referred to as a unikini, is a women's one-piece swimsuit equivalent to the lower half of a bikini.The Concise Oxford Dictionary (2004 ed.) In 1964, Rudi Gernreich, an Austrian fashion designer, designed the original monokini in the US. Gernreich also invented its name, and the word monokini is first recorded in English that year. Gernreich's monokini looked like a one-piece swimsuit suspended from two halter straps in the cleavage of bared breasts. It had only two small straps over the shoulders, leaving the breasts bare. Despite the reaction of fashion critics and church officials, shoppers purchased the monokini in record numbers that summer, though very few monokinis were ever worn in public. By the end of the season, Gernreich had sold 3000 swimsuits at $24 apiece, which meant a tidy profit for such a minuscule amount of fabric.Bikini Styles: Monokini , Everything Bikini Monokini usage is uncommon in the US, where Americans have never accepted it for the beach. Many women who wanted to sunbathe topless simply wore the bottom part of a bikini. Manufacturers and retailers quickly adapted to selling tops and bottoms separately. Gernreich later created the lesser known pubikini.
Peggy Moffitt modelled the suit for Gernreich. She said it was a logical evolution of Gernreich's avant-garde ideas in swimwear design as much as a scandalous symbol of the permissive society. In the 1960s, the monokini led the way into the sexual revolution by emphasizing a woman's personal freedom of dress, even when her attire was provocative and exposed more skin than had been the norm during the more conservative 1950s. Like all swimsuits, the monokini bottom portion of the swimsuit can vary in cut. Some have g-string style backs, while others provide full coverage of the rear. The bottom of the monokini may be high cut, reaching to the waist, with high cut legs, or may be a much lower cut, exposing the belly button. The modern monokini, which is less racy than Gernreich's original design, takes its design from the bikini, and is also described as "more of a cut-out one-piece swimsuit", with designers using fabric, mesh, chain, or other materials to link the top and bottom sections together, though the appearance may not be functional, but rather only aesthetic. In recent years, the term has come into use for topless bathing by women: where the bikini has two parts, the monokini is the lower part. Where monokinis are in use, the word bikini may jokingly refer to a two-piece outfit consisting of a monokini and a sun hat. The original monokini is still sold by Victoria's Secret as a half-kini.Katya Foreman, Why the bikini became a fashion classic, BBC, 13 September 2013
Microkini
A microkini (or micro bikini) is an extremely minimalist bikiniMicrokini at Merriam-Webster's Open Dictionary that uses less fabric than a traditional bikini in order to show more skin and create less visible tan lines. They typically have thong-style bottoms and string straps, covering little more than the nipples and pubic hair. See-through material is sometimes used for the straps to create the illusion that the triangles of fabric are taped to the body. Some variations of the microkini use adhesive or wire to hold the fabric in place over the genitals. These designs do not require any additional side straps to keep the garment in place.
Micro bikini designs for men were introduced at the end of the 1960s consisting of briefs that barely covered the coccyx and the pubic hair. These micro bikinis for men have continued to be popular in Brazil, particularly in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro. Women's micro bikinis first appeared in the 1970s. During the 1980s the popularity of highly revealing thongs such as those found in the microkini led to a rise in the use of Brazilian waxing to remove most of the hair from the pubic area.
The term "microkini" was first used in 1995 to describe the increasingly small bikini designs that were becoming popular at that time. In the same year fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld created a micro bikini for Chanel's spring 1996 collection. It resembled a string bikini except that the top's triangles were replaced with two small circles resembling nipple pasties. Other fashion brands including GCDS and Dior have since also produced their own versions of the microkini. Celebrities wearing microkinis have included Emily Ratajkowski, Kim Kardashian, Dua Lipa and Bella Hadid.
Microkinis keep the wearer just within legal limits of decency and fill a niche between nudism and conservative swimwear. In Europe the wearing of microkinis at beaches or hotels or public pools is often allowedMistrík, Erich, Pseudo-Concrete Ideals Of A Good Life, Human Affairs (2/2008), Department of Social & Biological Communication, Slovenská Akadémia Vied, Slovakia but it may be considered culturally inappropriate in more conservative societies. Wearing them in public is prohibited in some places by local laws which can carry a fine for infringement.
Tankini
The tankini is a swimsuit combining a tank top, mostly made of spandex-and-cotton or Lycra-and-nylon, and a bikini bottom introduced in the late 1990s.Becky Homan, "Tankini goes over the top", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1999-04-03 According to author William Safire, "The most recent evolution of the -kini family is the tankini, a cropped tank top supported by spaghetti-like strings." The tankini is distinguished from the classic bikini by the difference in tops, the top of the tankini essentially being a tank top. The tankini top extends downward to somewhere between just above the navel and the top of the hips. The word is a neologism combining the tank of tank top with the end of the word bikini. This go-between nature of tankini has rendered its name to things ranging from a lemonade-based martini (Tankini Martini)Cornelia Schinharl, Sebastian Dickhaut & Kelsey Lane, Party Basics: Everything You Need for the World's Best Party, page 98, Silverback Books, 2002, to server architecture (Tankini HipThread).Don Jones & Mark D. Scott, Using Microsoft Commerce Server 2002, page 211, Que Publishing, 2002, This type of swimwear is considered by some to provide modesty closer to that of a one-piece suit but with the convenience of a two-piece suit, such as not needing to remove the entire suit in order to use a lavatory.