Kelly Killoren Bensimon, a model-turned-magazine-editor-turned-author, documents, in The Bikini Book, the substantial significance of the tiny two piece since the introduction in the 1950s of competing versions by Jacques Heim and Louis Reard. She documents the history of the bikini, from drawings on cave walls in 1400 B.C. to burlesque and vaudeville performers.
The name "bikini" came from the testing of atomic bombs on the Bikini atoll in the South Pacific that same summer. (It was common during that era for pop culture to borrow words from the military. Think blonde bombshell.)
Bensimon is donating a portion of the proceeds of the book, which retails for $29.95, to the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
