Welcome to Classic-Bikinis.com. We are your one stop shop for bikinis of all sorts. Our bikinis are manufactured here in the USA. We have bikinis and swimsuits for all women-at any age, at any shape.

We differentiate ourselves based on innovation, detail and care for customers. We take special care to design and manufacture functional, yet creative, products. We pay particular attention to details which you will appreciate as you use our bikinis over the course of time. Naturally none of this would make any sense without you, the customer. We go the extra mile to make your shopping experience wonderful.

A short history of bikinis

Bikinis are a women's swimsuit with two parts, one covering the breasts, the other the groin (and optionally the buttocks), leaving an uncovered area between the two, although Camkinis and Tankini will often cover the stomach area. Obviously bikinis are worn in hot weather while swimming. The shape of bikinis resemble women's underwear, and the lower part can range from revealing thong or g-string to more modest square-cut shorts.

Prior to the modern bikinis we are accustomed to seeing at the beach, there is a relatively long history of predecessors to bikinis dating back to antiquity. Modern bikinis were invented by the Frenchman Louis R�ard in 1946 who coined the term bikini after Bikini Atoll and since this was the site of extensive nuclear weapons testing which he felt gave the apparel a futuristic sounding name which would create a buzz figuratively similar to the buzz around nuclear devices.

Bikinis are perhaps the most popular female beachwear around the globe due to the power of women since the emancipation of swimwear symbolized by bikinis has always been linked to the emancipation of women.

The history of the bikini is a checkered one. The earliest evidence of a bikini-like costume dates back to the Chalcolithic era, as the mother-goddess of �atalh�y�k, a large ancient settlement in southern Anatolia, is depicted astride two leopards wearing garb akin to a modern bikini. Two-piece garments worn by women for athletic purposes are on Greek urns and paintings dating back to 1400 BC. Active women of ancient Greece wore a breastband called a mastodeton or an apodesmos, which continued to be used as an undergarment in the Middle Ages. While men in ancient Greece abandoned the perizoma, partly high-cut briefs and partly loincloth, women performers and acrobats continued to wear it. Artwork dating back to the Diocletian period (286-305 AD) in Villa Romana del Casale, Sicily depicts women in garments resembling bikinis in mosaics on the floor. The images of ten women, dubbed the "Bikini Girls", exercising in clothing that would pass as bikinis today, are the most replicated mosaic among the 37 million colored tiles at the site. Archeological finds, especially in Pompeii, show the Roman goddess Venus wearing a bikini. A statue of Venus in a bikini was found in cupboard in the southwest corner in Casa della Venere, others were found in the front hall. A statue of Venus was recovered from the tablinum of the house of Julia Felix, and another from an atrium at the garden at Via Dell'Abbondanza.

The modern bikini started to emerge again in 1907, when Australian swimmer and performer Annette Kellerman was arrested on a Boston beach for wearing a form-fitting one-piece which became an accepted swimsuit for women by 1910. Pictures of her were produced as evidence in the Esquire magazine versus United States Postmaster General legal battle over indecency in 1943. In 1913, inspired by the introduction of females into Olympic swimming, the designer Carl Jantzen made the first functional two-piece swimwear, a close-fitting one-piece with shorts on the bottom and short sleeves on top. By the 1930s, necklines plunged at the back, sleeves disappeared and sides were cut away. Hollywood endorsed the new glamour with films such as Neptune's Daughter in which Esther Williams wore provocatively named costumes such as "Double Entendre" and "Honey Child". With new materials like lastex and nylon, by 1934 the swimsuit started hugging the body and had shoulder straps to lower for tanning. Burlesque and vaudeville performers wore two-piece outfits in the 1920s, and in 1932 French designer Madeleine Vionnet offered an exposed midriff in an evening gown.

By the early 1940s two-piece swimsuits were frequent on American beaches. Hollywood stars like Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth and Lana Turner tried similar swimwear or beachwear. Pin ups of Hayworth and Esther Williams in the costume were widely distributed. Finally, the modern bikini was introduced by French engineer Louis R�ard and fashion designer Jacques Heim in Paris in 1946. R�ard was a car engineer but by 1946 he was running his mother's lingerie boutique near Les Folies Berg�res in Paris. Heim was working on a new kind of beach costume. It comprised two pieces, the bottom large enough to cover its wearer's navel. In May 1946, he advertised it as the world's "smallest bathing suit". R�ard named his swimsuit the �bikini,� taking the name from the Bikini Atoll, one of a series of islands in the South Pacific where testing on the new atomic bomb was occurring that summer. Historians assume Reard termed his swimsuit the �bikini� because he believed its revealing style would create reactions among people similar to those created by America�s atomic bomb in Japan just one summer earlier. R�ard sliced the top off the bottoms and advertised it as "smaller than the smallest swimsuit". R�ard could not find a model to wear his design. He ended up hiring Micheline Bernardini, a nude dancer from the Casino de Paris. That bikini, a string bikini with a g-string back of 30 square inches (194 cm2) of clothes with newspaper type printed across, was introduced on July 5 at Piscine Molitor, a public pool in Paris. Heim's design was the first worn on the beach, but clothing was given its name by R�ard.

The bikini has spawned many stylistic variations. A regular bikini is defined as a two pieces of garments that cover the groin and buttocks at the lower end and the breasts in the upper end. Some bikinis can offer a large amount of coverage, while other bikinis provide only the barest minimum. Topless variants may still be considered bikinis, although technically no longer two-piece swimsuits. Along with a variation in designs, the term bikini was followed by an often hilarious lexicon including the monokini (top part missing), seekini (transparent bikini), tankini (tank top, bikini bottom), camikini (camisole top and bikini bottom) and hikini. Since fashions of different centuries exist beside one another in early 21st century, though it is possible to imagine a woman combining a bikini and a 1910 bathing costume.

Bikini tops come in several different styles and cuts, including a halter-style neck that offers more coverage and support, a strapless bandeau, a rectangular strip of fabric covering the breasts that minimizes large breasts, a top with cups similar to a push-up bra, and the more traditional triangle cups that lift and shape the breasts. Bikini bottoms vary in style and cut and in the amount of coverage they offer, coverage ranging anywhere from complete underwear-style coverage, as in the case of more modest bottom pieces like briefs, shorts, or briefs with a small skirt-panel attached, to almost full exposure, as in the case of the thong bikini. Skimpier styles have narrow sides, including V-cut (in front), French cut (with high-cut sides) and low-cut string (with string sides). In just one major fashion show in 1985 were two-piece suits with cropped tank tops instead of the usual skimpy bandeaux, suits that are bikinis in front and one-piece in back, suspender straps, ruffles, and daring, navel-baring cutouts.Subsequent variations on the theme include the monokini, tankini, string bikini, thong, slingshot, minimini, teardrop, and micro.