Louis Réard

Louis Réard (1896 to 1984) was a French automobile engineer and clothing designer who introduced the modern two-piece bikini in July 1946. Born in Lille, he was an automotive engineer who took over his mother's lingerie business around 1940 and became a clothing designer near the Folies Bergère in Paris. After noticing women on the beaches of Saint-Tropez rolling up the edges of their swimsuits to tan, he designed a suit that left the midriff exposed. He presented it to the press and public on 5 July 1946 at the Piscine Molitor in Paris, named it the bikini and marketed it with the slogan that it was the first anatomical bomb, and he applied for a patent for the design fourteen days later. The designer Jacques Heim had already produced a two-piece suit called the Atome, but Réard's design and his name for it became the lasting ones, and his business soared. He went on to run a bikini shop in Paris for about forty years, moved with his wife to Lausanne, Switzerland in 1980, and died there in 1984.