Canada celebrates National Bikini Day on July 5th!

It’s summer, so let’s have some fun with this blog while learning about an item that is not just common in 2025 but considered an essential summer clothing item in many female wardrobes!

I bet you didn’t know that Canada celebrates National Bikini Day every July 5th!  Truthfully, I just learned about this interesting bit of trivia and thought I would share it with fellow Canadians on this blog.

Since July 5, 1946, women have been hitting the beaches and pool sides in bikinis. Although no one knows who the founder of National Bikini Day is, this day does mark the anniversary of the invention of the revealing two-piece bathing suit.

Another interesting fact about bikinis?  It is named after the Bikini Atoll, a coral reef in the Marshall Islands, which consist of 23 islands surrounding a 229.4-square-mile central lagoon.  More interesting is the fact that during the cold war era, the United States tested more than 20 nuclear devices at the Bikini Atoll and nearby Enewetak Atoll.  Sadly, especially for its residents, residual radioactivity remains today at Bikini Atoll.

In May 1946, French Fashion and Costume Designer, Jacques Helm, introduced the “Atome”, a two-piece swimsuit, the produced which he advertised as the world’s “smallest bathing suit”.

Then, French automobile engineer and clothing designer Louis Réard quickly revealed his own two-piece swimsuit design consisting of four triangles made from only 30 sq. inches! Although two-piece swimsuits had been around since the 1930s, Réard’s design was controversial because, for the first time, the wearer’s navel was exposed. On this day in 1946, Réard introduced his creation to the media and world, calling it the “Bikini”, four days after the first nuclear weapon test was conducted in the Bikini Atoll, and the word stuck. Réard opened a bikini shop the next day and ran it for the next 40 years!

So the next time you don your two-piece bikini as you head to the beaches at Lake Erie, Lake Huron or at your cottage, give a thought to how this piece of clothing came about, what the deeper reference to its name is, and thank the Universe for gifts like fashion, creativity and entrepreneurship!