SCANDAL SPARKED FASHION FRENZY
Paula Stafford, whose controversial bikini brought fame to the Gold Coast, marked her 100th birthday this week
THE name Gold Coast did not even exist when Paula Stafford helped put the Glitter Strip on the fashion map.
It was 1952 and the region was known as the City of South Coast, home to sun, sand, surf and a new type of swimwear called the bikini.
The name was taken from the atol in the Pacific Ocean where the US had performed nuclear tests in the late 1940s but the debut of this bold design was just as explosive.
Surfers Paradise beach became the centre of the fashion scandal which set the stage for six decades of swimwear trends.
The significance of Paula Stafford’s incredible mark on history have been remembered this week as the fashion icon celebrated her 100th birthday on the Gold Coast.
Ms Stafford spent the day at the Mermaid Beach aged care centre she now calls home, celebrating with a cake.
She is one of the handful of still living Gold Coasters who witnessed the evolution of the region from a small town in the 1940s to the glittery metropolis of today.
Paula was born in Melbourne on June 10, 1920 and grew up in Victoria. Even as a teenager in the 1930s she began experimenting with two-piece swimwear designs and, despite dreams of becoming an architect, she went on to study dress design at the Emily McPherson School of Domestic Economy.
During the 1940s she moved to Queensland and married Beverley Stafford and continued her design work.
As World War II raged, a shortage of available materials saw the size of the swimsuit shrink as designs changed to suit the circumstances, while retaining the appropriate modesty of the time.
In 1946, a year after war’s end, French designer Louis Reard is credited with inventing the bikini, producing a twopiece outfit called “the Atome” which was unveiled on July 5 that year.
This public debut was just four days after the first nuclear tests at Bikini Atol and the name soon stuck.
Six years later, Paula Stafford was living on the Gold Coast and running a Surfers Paradise business which hired out windbreakers to tourists.
By then a mother of three, she had begun making twopiece swimsuits with tie-sides for herself and her daughters.
These outfits began to attract attention and she began to manufacture them on a much wider scale.
The year was 1952 and the South Coast’s beaches were now globally famous.
And as more of her swimsuits appeared, their popularity grew rapidly, particularly after an infamous incident which attracted national attention.
A Sydney model, Ann Ferguson, sported one of Ms Stafford’s creations when she walked down to the beach to catch a tan.
John Moffatt, the region’s first professional lifeguard, saw this skimpy outfit and immediately walked down and demanded Ms Ferguson cover herself up and leave the beach immediately.
“It was no big thing. I just mentioned to her I thought her cossie was a little too brief and maybe she should cover up a little more,” Moffatt told the Bulletin before his 2005 death.
An immediate sensation, it saw orders for bikinis go through the roof and brought fame and fortune to Ms Stafford and the Gold Coast, which became closely associated with swimwear and its beach lifestyle.
“The bikini has always been a news-getter,’’ she said in 2009.
“Let’s face it, what women wear does influence men a lot. Throughout the time I was in the business, you only had to mention the word bikini and the press went mad about it.
“It’s a subject that stirs people up quite a lot.”
While Louis Reard invented the bikini, Ms Stafford is now credited with popularising the design and making it worldfamous. She went on to sell bikinis through her own boutique chain and supplied more than 400 shops.
In 2015 she was among the dignitaries to attend a celebration of the life of former Gold Coast Mayor Sir Bruce Small on the 35th anniversary.
This led to calls for a statue of the pioneer to be erected in Surfers Paradise where she made her mark.