Wednesday, March 26, 2008

A la recherche des bathing suits perdus (and no wonder)

Acting on a tip from Meggiecat, yesterday evening after a strenuous day of hiking around Vincennes (the one in Indiana), I sat down to do some exploring on Google Patent.

Meggie suggests you type "design" in the search field and go from there, but I decided to narrow the parameters a bit and typed in "design dress," "design sweater," and finally "design bathing suit."

The dresses were quite fun, and a couple of the evening gowns were pips (although one 1941 day dress with life-sized artificial chrysanthemums centered over the bust points would never have found it's way into my wardrobe). The bathing suits, on the other hand...

This one falls, I think I can safely say without fear of contradiction, smack dab into the "what were they thinking?" school of design.

Another mind-boggling number; can you imagine a live human female willing to be seen out in public in this?

And this one...oh my. To be fair, it is supposed to be a sunsuit rather than a bathing suit. I don't know whether the aesthetic is more Tarzan or The Last of the Mohicans.

This one, though...ah, this one makes up for them. You'd have to have the figure of a goddess to carry it off and I see buckles instead of the bows, but what a smashing, sexy suit.

Go play around on Google Patents (and tell Meggie I sent you!)

4 comments:

Overeducated Twit said...

Those are certainly... um, stylish? The first one in particular seems to be channeling Garden of Eden chic.

Anonymous said...

How I love Google Patents! So much fun.

I like your blog - sounds like we have a lot of interests in common.

Thanks for visiting Kitchen Retro - I am glad I found your blog through that!

Lidian

broadcasting from a knitting parlour said...

arvopartThe dates kill me. Is that a 1938 model and a 1944? Holy cow. Purty darn racy, may I say.

Love your blog.

Life in a small town is good, nay?

Cheers!

Elle in NoFla

Shay said...

and the inflatable one is from 1950!

If you left click on them I think you can get a larger image. I don't know which one is more eyebrow-raising, the figleaf one or that mudflap sunsuit.