The More Things Change

Whoa, hold on a second.  The date says 1912, but the picture says something else.  The suits worn by the female Olympic swimmers are as revealing as anything that would follow 40, 50 or even 60 years later.

"God knows what the material was," says Preston Levi, director of the Henning Library at the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., "but it left nothing to the imagination."

Before you go running off to the magazine stacks in the public library, understand that the moment Levi describes was but yet another valley - or peak, depending on your perspective - in the modesty scale that has comprised the history of swimwear. 

In the first modern Olympics in 1896, four of the five men who swam, according to Levi, wore nothing at all.  That public exposure was encased by years of moral and legal campaigns to cover up, culminating with the arrest of Australian swimmer Annette Kellermann on a Massachusetts beach in 1907 for wearing a woolen body suit with a scooped neckline and opaque black stockings.  No skirt covered her front, and no sleeves covered her shoulders and arms.

Shocking!

The trend for more modesty continued through the early part of the last century.  One of the more contentious issues surrounding women's Olympic swimming in its early years was whether men would be allowed to watch. 

But change was inevitable, pushed by the enhanced popularity of swimming among the general public and the growing recognition of Olympic competition. Whether the occasional bather or the serious competitor, both demanded more practical outfits. Shapeless woollen suits consisting of yards of material just wouldn't do.

Shocking!

From Bathing to Swimming

The Jantzen Knitting Mills Company (known today as simply Jantzen) of Portland, Ore., took the lead, pushing technical innovations such as Lastex, a rubberized yarn that hugged the body without limiting maneuverability, and synthetic materials such as rayon.  The company also pushed marketing techniques that have since become standard.  Olympic champions Duke Kahanamoku (1920) and Johnny Weissmuller (1924 and 1928) endorsed its products.  Jantzen's red diving girl was every bit as recognizable then as the Nike swoosh would be decades later.

"The main purpose of Jantzen at the time was to change the mindset from bathing to swimming," says company historian Carol Alhadeff.

However, the suits stayed mostly wool and competitively unfriendly.  Until 1933, there was little to distinguish men's from women's suits.  Both went from mid-thigh to over the shoulder.  (Lawmakers were fond of keeping men's chests under cover).  The Japanese introduced a sheer, lightweight silk suit at the 1936 Olympics, but World War II diverted the initiative.  It would be left to a Navy veteran who knew swimming and had a knack for innovation to come up with the first suit that truly separated competitive from recreational swimmers.

Compulsive Tinkerer

Adolph Kiefer was the dominant backstroker in the 1930s and early 1940s.  He won a gold medal in the 1936 Olympics in the 100m backstroke as a 17-year-old and undoubtedly would have won two additional gold medals in 1940 and 1944 if not for World War II.

Kiefer, a compulsive tinkerer, experimented with nylon, a man-made material that compensated for the shortage of silk during the war.

"It was tough, form-fitting and inexpensive," says Kiefer, CEO and owner of Adolph Kiefer & Associates, which supplies a full range of aquatic products.  "The men's suit retailed for $4, the women's suit for $8."

Kiefer handed the suits out to 1948 Olympic competitors in London.  The feedback was overwhelmingly positive.  Unlike wool, nylon stretched to a snug fit.  More important, it didn't hold water.  Wool was like a towel, nylon like a screen. 

The Australian company, Speedo, picked up on Kiefer's innovation and saturated the market.  Nylon became a staple within the competitive swimming world and would enjoy a 25-year run.

However, nylon suits had their drawbacks.  The material stretched only one way, so the fit was snug, but not taut.  Also, proper sizing was difficult.

"They fit like jeans - didn't stretch much," says 1968 Olympian Cathy Corcione.  "I could never get a suit that fit me just right, no matter what size I got."

Early on, nylon suits were considered revealing, even with the required "skirt" in the front of the women's suits.  A move to material that would provide a tighter fit required parallel changes in social mores, which the bikini aptly provided. 

Some histories of fashion say the birth of the bikini in the 1940s came about because of a shortage of fabric during World War II.  More likely, the bikini was merely a milestone in a predictable timeline.

In their 1990 book, Splash! A History of Swimwear, fashion historians Richard Martin and Harold Koda outline the progressive unveiling of women's bodies during the 20th Century.  First there was the liberation of the arms during the teens, followed by the exposure of legs in the 1920s and necklines in the 1930s.  Bare midriffs and sides showed up in the 1940s and 1950s.  The navel saw the light of day in the 1960s.  And with the 1970s came bare hips.

The bikini never gained a foothold in competitive swimming, but the trend that it represented did in 1973, when the East German women swam at the United States Nationals in suits that hugged their bodies more like paint than cloth.  Steve Furniss, executive vice-president and founder of TYR and a 1972 and 1976 Olympian, was, to say the least, impressed.

"The suits conformed to the body so tightly, that it looked like they were sprayed on," he recalls.

The suits introduced spandex (or Lycra, the DuPont trade name) to competitive swimming.  Spandex has an incredible ability to stretch without losing its shape.  The wrinkles of all-nylon suits were gone forever, and the timing was just right for universal acceptance.

"At the time, the sexual liberation was in full swing," says Dr. Valerie Steele, director of the museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.  "It was the perfect moment for an ultra body-revealing swimsuit."

With the advent of spandex, the race for less was on.  Men's suits shrunk to less material than a table napkin.  Speedo came to signify more than a brand name.  Among the general public, the term meant anything between a thong and trunks. 

To get more compression, women squeezed themselves into smaller and smaller suits.

"My 36 back then would be a 30 today," says Corcione, who coaches a club team in New Jersey.

All-nylon suits didn't disappear.  Rather, because of their durability, they were relegated to practice suits. 

Competition suits represented the latest in cuts and fabrics.  By the late 1990s, the move for compression and brevity reached its zenith with suits composed of a woven nylon/Lycra blend, with the Lycra content up to 40 percent.  The suit allowed for considerable compression, but along with this degree of compression came transparency.  As Furniss understates, "There were issues with modesty."

Better Than Skin

Technology redirected this trend.  Computers and flumes allowed researchers to measure the drag swimmers create as they make their way through the water.  The common belief that skin presented the least friction came under question, replaced by the notion that carefully engineered materials could direct water flow more efficiently around swimmers' bodies.

The first visible sign of this new line of thinking was tight fitting, waist-to-knee men's suits called jammers.  Then Australian Ian Thorpe, the best swimmer in the world at the time, started wearing a full-body suit, leaving only his hands, face and feet uncovered.  A new age of competitive swimwear had begun, underscored by the conviction that science could produce something better than skin.

Where all of this will lead is hard to say.  The 2004 Olympics left no question that traditional brief cuts for men and women have fallen out of favor with the majority of world-class swimmers.  But there was no consensus on what will replace the briefs. 

Preferences for suits, whether shoulder to knee, waist to ankle, shoulder to ankle, or full body, showed no discernable pattern.  The four American men who swam to a gold medal in the finals of the 800m free relay wore three different styles of suits.

In general, though, the suits worn by both the men and women in Athens triggered a case of deja  vu. Clinging suits from shoulder to mid-thigh - Where have we seen that before?  That's right - in pictures of the medalists from the 1912 Olympics.

As the old adage says: The more things change, the more they stay the same