1955
A Paula Stafford bikini
Itsy bitsy beginning for Australian fashion
This bikini was designed by Paula Stafford, a leading Australian swimsuit designer from the 1950s through to the 1980s. It is made of navy and white cotton and is reversible – a design feature for which Stafford bikinis were well known.
Government regulations recognised that the combination of the sun, the surf and women’s skin could lead to all kinds of immorality. In 1838, bathing in Sydney’s harbour and at beaches was banned between the hours of 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. These rules were not relaxed until 1902.
World-champion swimmer Annette Kellermann understood the appeal of mixing sport, sex and vaudeville. When not undertaking a 22-mile (35 kilometres) challenge down the Danube, she appeared on stage as the ‘Australian Mermaid’ and ‘Diving Venus’ wearing swimsuits that showed to best advantage her body, judged to be that of ‘the perfect woman’. (‘From the neck down!’ she quipped.) In 1907 Kellermann was arrested on a Boston beach because authorities deemed her one-piece swimsuit too brief.
Beatrice Kerr followed in Kellermann’s footsteps, competing in swimming races and appearing in theatrical aquatic events and demonstrations. Audiences were as keen to see her in a ‘daring’ swimsuit as they were to be instructed in the finer points of the trudgen stroke.
As the 20th century progressed, swimsuits became briefer. The two-piece neck-to-knee with a long skirt over thigh-length pants was all the rage in 1910 but destined for redundancy. American company Jantzen created a one-piece woollen ‘tank suit’ for women in 1918.
In 1927, the MacRae Knitting Mills of Sydney introduced a one-piece cotton costume for men that exposed their shoulders and back like a singlet. It was considered too brief for some beaches but its streamlining gave the swimmer extra speed in the water, hence the product’s name: Speedo. At the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, Australian swimmer Clare Dennis won gold in the 200-metre breaststroke in a Speedo suit that was said to ‘show too much shoulder’.
The next big revolution in women’s swimwear occurred in France in 1946, when haberdasher Louis Réard designed a costume that was so risqué no model would pose in it and he had to use an exotic dancer, Micheline Bernardini, to model it on 5 July 1946 at Piscine Molitor in Paris. He named it the bikini after Bikini Atoll in the Pacific where France had recently carried out nuclear testing. In his promotion he said it wasn’t a bikini unless it could be pulled through a wedding ring.
The bikini and its display of the navel were a bridge too far for many, from the Pope to Hollywood producers. It was even too much for Bondi Beach in Sydney. On the October long weekend in 1961, between 50 and 75 women were ordered off Bondi Beach, and that month, dancer and actress Joan Barry was fined £3 for wearing an offensive swimming costume on Bondi. However, by the end of the year Waverley Council raised the white flag and permitted bikinis onto the hallowed sands of Bondi. The following year Playboy magazine featured its first bikini cover, and two years after that Sports Illustrated launched its now-legendary annual swimsuit issue. Australian model Elle Macpherson made her name and career internationally as a Sports illustrated model, appearing on the cover a record four times.
In most parts of the world, beach culture is experienced only on vacation for a couple of weeks a year, but in Australia the beach is a fundamental part of the culture and a swimming costume is an essential item, not an accessory. For that reason Australians have excelled at the design and manufacture of swimwear.
Paula Stafford, who made bikinis for her shop in Surfers Paradise from the 1940s, is the Australian queen of the bikini. She claimed that the brevity of her costumes was due to wartime rationing and shortages of textiles. Her Tog Shop on Cavill Avenue in Surfers Paradise was the acme of sophistication in Australia. Stafford brought a bit of that ambience to Sydney Town Hall in 1956 with the first bikini parade. Part of the glamour rubbed off on her garments, and she was soon exporting interstate and internationally to stores such as Selfridges and Liberty of London, Myer, Georges and David Jones.
In 1952, model Ann Ferguson was asked by police inspector John Moffatt to leave the beach in Surfers Paradise because her Paula Stafford bikini was too revealing. According to Stafford, ‘Well, it wasn’t any smaller than what the others wore . . . she was just too sexy!’ The publicity was a great fillip to her business, and the next day she had five models in bikinis on the beach and a bevy of photographers. Stafford’s daughter Sybil was asked to leave St Vincent’s College boarding school in Sydney because of the moral taint. We have come a long way from there.