July 2023 was the hottest month ever recorded on the planet, so I bet many folks wanted to jump in a cool body of water (if such a thing exists anymore). Up until the 18th century or so, most people took a refreshing dip in the nude, but also in private or segregated by gender. As public and co-ed bathing became a thing, specialized outfits for swimming were needed, and while at first, these tended to be voluminous with the aim of hiding the body (especially female bodies), over time, swimwear got sleeker. This fashion evolution has only fleetingly shown up in frock flicks. When historical movies and TV shows do show swimming, it tends to be early 20th century swimwear, not much earlier.
Let’s see how frock flicks try to beat the heat with swimwear from the past!
Sanditon, episode 1 (2019)
Appropriate for a story set at a seaside resort, the series opened with several of the ladies wearing red garb and using a bathing machine to frolic in the waves. In the 1810s, a woman’s bathing costume would be closer to a heavy chemise, sometimes with small weights sewn into the hem so it wouldn’t immodestly float up. What’s worn in this show seems a bit more like what was worn later in the 19th century.
Compare with these chemise-clad ladies emerging from their bathing machines:
I think the TV show’s outfits are more reminiscent of:
Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
I’ve analyzed these costumes in more depth (click the link) because I adore designer Colleen Atwood‘s gothic spin on Victorian bathing attire. These outfits skew towards the end of the 19th century, even though the story is ostensibly set earlier.
His suit is right out of period imagery:
Hers is definitely inspired by period fashions:
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, “Dead Man’s Chest” (2013)
Now we jump ahead to when recreational swimming becomes really popular. In the 1920s, fashion loosens up and shows more of the body, so revealing swimsuits are common. Phryne Fisher wears a colorful ’20s suit in an episode from season 2.
Her costume is right in line with the popular styles of the time:
Evil Under the Sun (1982)
Men’s swimwear of the ’20s and ’30s shared many of the same details as women’s — one piece, thigh-length to knee-length, belted, contrast trim. Hercule Poirot wears a fashionable ensemble in this film.
Here’s an extant example from an online auction that’s reminiscent of his costume:
The Durrells in Corfu (2016-19)
While the “bikini” wasn’t named until 1946, two-piece swimsuits were around long before that. Margo wears a cute knitted version for sun-bathing in Greece.
This knitted suit looks just like what she’s wearing in the episode!
She also wears a one-piece for swimming at other times in the series.
What’s your favorite style of historical swimsuit?
Mrs. Maisel’s swimsuits were well done, I thought.
There’s something inherently fascinating about a knitted swimming costume – it’s so very different from our modern experience of swimwear as to make very clear that “The past is another country, they do things differently there”.
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I wonder how comfortable those knitted swimsuits were as they were wetted and dried out?
They look really nice, but I also keep thinking about what they feel like when wet, and how heavy they must be. I also think the same when i see modern crochet bikinis where the bikinibottom ties together with super slender crochet strings, like, how does that not fall down when wet and heavy?
My eightysomething father remembers woolen swimming trunks with horror – apparently they chafed very badly when wet and had a tendency to fall down under their own weight.
That’s probably why the bathingsuits for men also had straps in some decades.
They look really cute, but now they’d probably be like those swimsuits you wear when you’re just sunning around the pool
Hercule Poirot’s swimsuit is great, but I also love Diana Rigg’s suits in the same movie (Especially the red one she wears with the espadrilles). :)
I love Miss Fisher’s costume, and you really should have shown the swimming costume worn by Jack Robinson in the same episode. Nathan Page really is made for 1920’s clothes. In other great swimsuits there is the red swimsuit worn by Maeve Dermody in “And Then There Were None” (2015)
There’s a beach scene in Chaplin with Robert Downey Jr looking pretty hot in a swimsuit. Now I may need to watch that movie again!
Tom Branson and Lucy in Downton Abbey A New Era!
Knitted out of what??
I’m guessing wool or other less absorbent fiber.
When I think of historical bathing suits…I think of the (1994) film ‘The Road To Wellville’ with Anthony Hopkins & Matthew Broderick, and a star studded cast. It’s a seriously strange (true) story, with people in Victorian bathing suits and also a lot of bare bottoms 🤭.
I find those 1900s men’s low-cut bathing suits (which resembled women’s maillots) kind of sexy; they reveal enough and cover up enough. Terry Jones of Monty Python did a fabulous solo in one. (He was at the seaside, trying to find an empty changing room, and ended up on a music hall stage doing a strip from his Edwardian striped suit into a bathing costume.)
The t.v. show Another Period has a beach episode. The movie Sirens, the movie Brideshead Revisited, and the movie Enchanted April also had beach/swimming scenes.
There are some nice clothes in Hotel Portofino, set after WW I. There is one “racy American woman” who has a lovely swimming suit.