According to the official version, the modern bikini was invented by French engineer Louis Réard and fashion designer Jacques Heim in Paris in 1946 and introduced on July 25 at a fashion show at Piscine Molitor in Paris. It was a string bikini with a g-string back. It was named after Bikini Atoll, the site of nuclear weapon tests a few days earlier in the Marshall Islands, on the reasoning that the burst of excitement it would cause would be like the nuclear device. Reard's suit was a refinement of the work of Jacques Heim who, two months earlier, had introduced the "Atome" (named for its size) and advertised it as the world's "smallest bathing suit". Reard 'split the "atome"' even smaller, but could not find a model who would dare to wear his design. He ended up hiring Micheline Bernardini, a nude dancer from the Casino de Paris as his model.
Bikini-style swimwear existed for many years before the first official bikini, however. The July 9, 1945, issue of Life, for example, shows women in Paris wearing similar items. Films of holidaymakers in Germany in the 1930s show women wearing two-piece bathing suits. Anyone who has seen the elaborately and lavishly assembled Busby Berkeley film spectacle, Footlight Parade of 1932 would have been treated to a stunning aquachoreography that profusely featured what could only be regarded as bikini swimwear. They were to be seen again a year later in Gold Diggers of 1933.
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