Micheline Bernardini

Micheline Bernardini (born 1 December 1927) is a French former nude dancer at the Casino de Paris who agreed to model, on 5 July 1946, Louis Réard's two-piece swimsuit, which he called the bikini, named four days after the first test of an American nuclear weapon at the Bikini Atoll.^[1]

Micheline Bernardini
Modeling the first bikini on 5 July 1946 at the Piscine Molitor in Paris
Born	(1927-12-01) 1 December 1927 (age 97) Colmar, France
Nationality	French
Occupation	Model

Réard's bikini

Designer Louis Réard could not find a runway model willing to showcase his revealing design for a two-piece swimsuit.^[2] Risqué for its time, it exposed the wearer's navel and much of her buttocks. He hired Bernardini, an 18-year-old nude dancer from the Casino de Paris, as his model.^[3][4] He introduced his design, a two-piece swimsuit with a g-string back made out of 30 square inches (194 cm²) of cloth with newspaper type pattern, which he called a bikini, at a press conference at the Piscine Molitor, a popular public pool in Paris in July 1946.^[5]

Photographs of Bernardini and articles about the event were widely carried by the press. The International Herald Tribune alone ran nine stories on the event.^[6] The bikini was a hit, especially among men, and Bernardini received over 50,000 fan letters.^[7]

Later life

Bernardini later moved to Australia. She appeared from 1948 to 1958 in a number of revues at the Tivoli Theatre, Melbourne.^[8][9] Footage of her 1946 modelling appearance was featured in an episode of the reality television series Love Lust titled The Bikini, in 2011.^[10]

Bernardini posed at age 58 in a bikini for photographer Peter Turnley in 1986.^[11]