During the 1920s and 1930s, people began to shift from “taking in the water” to “taking in the sun”, at bathhouses and spas, and swimsuit designs shifted from functional considerations to incorporate more decorative features.
Rayon was used in the 1920s in the manufacture of tight-fitting swimsuits, but its durability, especially when wet, proved problematic, with jersey and silk also sometimes being used.
11 women and a little girl lined up for bathing beauty contest, USA
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Bea Kyle Standing Fire Engine and Pickle 1924
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Bermuda Beach 1929
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Bill Norton the bathing beach policeman measuring distance between knee and bathing suit on woman, Washington, D.C.
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Contestants, Bathing Girl Revue, Galveston, Tex., May 13, 1923
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Contestants, Bathing Girl Revue, Galveston, Tex., May 14th, 1922
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Errnest and Pauline Hemingway, San Sebastian, circa September 1927. Photograph in the Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.
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French antique dealer Yvonne de Bremond d’Ars (1894-1973) on the beach at Deauville
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High diver Beatrice Kyle sitting on a fire engine wheel between acts at the Society Circus at Fort Myer, Va.; for the benefit of the Army Relief Fund; Apr. 25, 1924. .
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Human tower on the sands at South Stradbroke Island, 1922 Young people from Roe’s Camp playing games on the beach. .
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Mack Sennett’s Bathing Beauties .
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Burlesque and vaudeville performers wore two-piece outfits in the 1920s. The 1929 film Man with a Movie Camera shows Russian women wearing early two-piece swimsuits which expose their midriff, and a few who are topless. Films of holidaymakers in Germany in the 1930s show women wearing two-piece suits, In 1928, Speedo introduced their racerback silk suit that was optimized to fit the body shape.
1920s swimsuit postcard .
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Women dancing on beach, Toronto, Canada. .
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Woman on beach in Bermuda, with seaweed, 1929 .
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woman in a bathing suit is walking a leashed seal on the beach in Long Beach as people watch. .
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Viola Swinnerton & Anna Neibel .
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Truus van Aalten (Dutch film actress, 1910-1999) meets a fake frog. .
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Annual_beauty_show,_Washington_Bathing_Beach .
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Man Swimsuit, 1920; Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg .
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Argentine swimmer Alberto Zorrilla in 1925.
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Bathing models in a museum, 1920.
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Bath costume contest,1921,
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Bathing Beach, 1920
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Bathing Suit 1920s.
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By the 1930s men began to go without shirts for swimming, and bare-chestedness in male swimwear became the norm by the end of the 1940s, including in competitive swimming events. The norm of male bare-chestedness in swimwear did not extend to other competitive sports.