Beach Party

In 1946 Louis Réard, a car engineer who had taken over his mother’s lingerie boutique near Les Folies Bergères in Paris, met with disbelief when he brought out a new range of skimpy, two-piece swimsuits made from just 70cms (27½in)of cloth. Although similar garments had been worn by Roman and Greek women to the baths, they were considered shocking in M Réard’s day. Provocatively, his garment revealed the navel — a part of the anatomy banned as indecent from Hollywood films under the Hays Code in the 1930s. [Source]