How the BIG-INI suddenly got HUGE!
Forget the itsy-bitsy two-piece, even flat-tummed celebs are loving a high waist this summer
SPOTTED on holiday in Barbados with her brood of five boys (if you include husband Wayne, 34), Coleen Rooney enjoyed some sporting activity at the weekend wearing a stylish Balmain two-piece.
Refreshingly modest, though at €605 not modestly priced, football WAG Coleen, 34, is riding the crest of a fashion wave that has heralded the rise and rise of the high-waisted, generously proportioned Big-ini.
The internet is awash with flattering and forgiving designer two-pieces. From top end names such as Norma Kamali, Eres and uber-fashionable swimwear designer Marysia, to more affordable offerings from the likes of Asos and Calzedonia.
And because the Irish beach is as exotic as it’s likely to get for most of us, the staycation trend combined with a nostalgia for what seemed like simpler times, has created a perfect moment for this particular blast from fashion’s past.
The brilliant Big-ini channels the heyday of Hollywood when stars of the silver screen from Rita Hayworth to Marilyn Monroe, managed to look both acceptably provocative and sensationally glamorous in largebottomed two-piece beachwear. It’s also a subtle acknowledgment of changing societal attitudes towards the female body since the bikini was first invented.
The itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny bikini that exploded into being on July 5, 1946, when Michele Bernardini posed for the cameras in what was essentially four triangles of fabric, a get-up so skimpy that it could be squeezed into the matchbox she brandished in her hand, sparked global outrage.
And while it didn’t really take off until the Fifties, after Brigitte Bardot put it on the map in 1952 by posing at the Cannes Film Festival to promote the movie Manina, The Girl In The Bikini, it then began to fuel the notion that maximum exposure demanded minimal flesh covering. After all these decades of minuscule beachwear and reality TV stars baring almost all, the Big-ini comes as a giant relief.
To know that you can be stylish and comfortable without the pressure to reveal every inch is surely the Holy Grail of beach dressing. And for those of us whose weight has burgeoned these past few months, it comes in handy as the perfect lockdowneasing swimwear.
Super-slim Lily James and Elle Macpherson carry off the look with A-lister panache. Generally, though, the Big-ini is most flattering for curvy girls rather than hipless, waistless, skinny minnies with washboard stomachs. A beachwear trend that favours bigger girls? It doesn’t get much better than that.