Posted on 06/11/2010 10:01:18 AM PDT by llevrok
A FRENCHMAN may have officially unveiled the bikini, but it was the Gold Coast's grand dame of fashion, Paula Stafford, who made the two-piece cossie a cheeky Aussie icon.
The "queen of the bikini" celebrated her 90th birthday on Thursday with a slap-up party and the launch of her biography, Bikini: The Paula Stafford Story.
French engineer Louis Reard is widely credited with inventing the bikini in 1946.
He named it after Bikini Atoll, the site of French nuclear tests in the South Pacific.
But it was Mrs Stafford who made Australian beachgoers say "ooh la la" when she launched the bikini on our shores in the early 1950s.
The pioneering Gold Coast fashionista had actually been making and wearing two-piece swimming costumes since she was a teenager in the 1930s, using colourful curtain and furniture fabrics.
Thanks to patronage from well-heeled southerners and visiting celebrities including Sammy Davis Jr, Mrs Stafford's fame spread and she eventually opened a boutique in Sydney.
The modern bikini might be a micro-version of its original self but even at 90, Mrs Stafford is no prude.
"You can't go much briefer with the bikini but I don't think they're too raunchy," she said.
"A bikini is a bikini."
LOL! Good One!
MG! It’s The Girl From Niptokneetas
Would be about the right age huh? :) lol
You know, for some reason, that picture made me think of the first couple of words from the song “Me and Bobby McGee”...
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Good One! lol
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