Exactly eighty years ago, on 5 July 1946, a piece of fabric scandalised Europe so much that no professional model would wear it. Today millions of women wear it every summer without a second thought. The story of the bikini is the story of how what was shameful becomes normal - it just takes enough time.

It was invented by Louis Réard, a French automotive engineer who inherited his mother's lingerie shop in Paris. His design - „four triangles of fabric with a newspaper print“ - revealed the navel, which in 1946 was almost a provocation. Since no model would pose in it, Réard had to hire Micheline Bernardini, a dancer from a Parisian casino, for the premiere at the famous Molitor pool.

Even the name is explosive in the literal sense. Réard named it after the Bikini atoll in the Marshall Islands, where the USA had recently tested an atomic bomb. He wanted his creation to trigger an „explosive reaction“ in fashion - and it succeeded. What began as a shock to public morals became, within a few decades, a symbol of summer and of women's freedom.

The icons finished the rest. Brigitte Bardot turned it into a symbol of the French Riviera's freedom in the sixties. Ursula Andress's white bikini from the 1962 James Bond film entered cinema history - that single costume was sold at auction in 2020 for a starting price of half a million dollars. Interestingly, the idea wasn't even new: Roman mosaics from Sicily in the 4th century already depict women in two-piece sportswear.

The lesson is older than the bikini. Every era has its taboos, and almost every one of them eventually falls - not because someone won an argument, but because a new generation simply stops agreeing with the shame of the previous one. The question isn't whether today's taboos will fall, but which are the ones that now seem untouchable to us and will seem laughable to our grandchildren.