KEY POINTS:
Taking the waters has been regarded as beneficial and entertaining since the notoriously pungent court of Elizabeth I, but removing one's clothes to do so is a more recent development, particularly for women.
The Virgin Queen and her odorous sidekicks entered the sulphurous pools at Bath fully dressed. In Jane Austen's time, women wore white muslin gowns while bobbing up and down politely in that city's waters on a well-earned break from an arduous at-home piano recital, say, or some equally demanding embroidery project.
After George IV ordered the rebuilding of the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, bathing became the height of fashion. But in prudish Victorian Britain, it was said that women were expected to wear more clothes to swim in the sea than they did for a promenade in the park. Modesty laws barred the merest glimpse of bare flesh, so cumbersome skirts were weighed down with lead shot to ensure they didn't ride up in the water. To make doubly certain that all was as it should be, suitably menacing officials scoured the pebbled beaches with tape measures carting off any poor soul who exposed more lower leg than allowed.
It took World War I to overturn such values. The French resorts of Deauville and Biarritz were populated by women too fashion-conscious to wear anything as unattractive as the by-then requisite uniform of bloomers - even if bloomers appeared positively pragmatic compared to what had gone before them.
By the 1920s, Coco Chanel had decreed the suntan fashionable and set to crafting body-conscious swimwear in jersey - a fabric previously associated with nothing more haute than men's underwear - so women could have both ease of movement and style.
In Hollywood, meanwhile, studio bosses employed bathing belles to promote their work. Men liked looking at women in their swimsuits, moviedom's powers cunningly deduced, even if those swimsuits were still loose-fitting to the point of appearing clownish by European standards.
Perhaps more than any other garment, the swimming costume has changed almost out of recognition over the past hundred-odd years. A new book, The Swimsuit, published by Carlton Books, does much to highlight this fact, as well as giving impressively diverse swimwear facts.
For example, Australian swimmer and underwater ballerina Annette Kellerman was arrested in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1907 for indecent exposure after wearing her swimming costume in public. And Speedo appeared on the scene as far back as 1956, producing a nylon swimsuit for the Melbourne Olympics.
From the beaches of Biarritz to Baywatch, from a footloose and fancy-free Marilyn Monroe soaking up rays at the start of her career to a decidedly more knowing Elizabeth Hurley in diamante and inky black techno-stretch, swimwear has had some fine moments.
1910s-1920s
The Hollywood film industry was gathering momentum, and on the West Coast of America decency laws were relaxed, so women could frolic in heavyweight knitted swimwear. Good news for women the world over, at least some of whose predecessors had died trying to swim in the long, billowing skirts and elaborate corsetry that were the order of the day until the turn of the century.
1930s
It wasn't until the 1930s that Hollywood recognised the full power of the swimsuit ... or, rather, the considerable impact of the world's most glamorous women appearing in ever more risque states of undress. With this firmly in mind, Cole of California began collaborating with studio costumiers to produce swimwear for the stars, dressing the likes of Bette Davies, Joan Crawford and others. In France, Elsa Schiaparelli patented her design for a backless swimming costume to promote even tanning. In America, Claire McCardell came up with a cut-out version on the theme - deemed the forerunner of the bikini.
1940s
The two-piece had been around for a good decade before Louis Rard claimed to have invented it in 1946.
1950s
Christian Dior's hour-glass New Look, a timely and extravagant reaction to wartime austerity, touched everything from exclusive Paris ateliers to the beach. Should a woman not be curvaceous enough to live up to the fashions of the day, the foundations of her clothing would give her a helping hand.
1960s
When Ursula Andress stepped out of the water in a white, underwired bikini as Honey Ryder in Dr No, she resembled a new and improved Venus for the swinging age. The youthful bow at the solar plexus, the strong-shouldered, snake-hipped silhouette and low-slung belt could only spring from that era. Any cultural context aside, this is perhaps the world's most celebrated swimwear moment.
1970s
The likes of Jerry Hall and Marie Helvin were photographed in barely-there swimwear at exotic destinations the world over. The expanse of midriff exposed was far greater than it previously had been.
1980s-1990s
Le sportif. Was there any full-blooded, heterosexual man who could resist Pamela Anderson as CJ in the 1990s TV hit, Baywatch? Probably not. And this despite the fact that her swimsuit was positively demure. As the programme was filmed with minimalism at its height, that was precisely the point. It is safe to say that where the pneumatic Ms Anderson's good looks were concerned, no embellishment was necessary.
NOUGHTIES
My, the humble swimsuit has come a long way. Suffice to say that Queen Victoria must surely be spinning in her grave.
- Independent
