Bikini

Icons Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot famously posed in fuller-cut swimwear and came off sexier than any bikini-clad Sports Illustrated cover girl could. If you want to channel that retro style at the beach, try posing this summer in something from Marysia Swim. Marysia is only three seasons old, but the line's classic looks are a fresh breeze in a sea of body-baring bikinis. Designer Maria Dobrzanska Reeves draws inspiration from swimsuits from the 1940s through 1970s and from her childhood ballerina training in Warsaw — hence the tutus and leotard shapes.

Granted, the pink-and-white, French-cut bikini was somewhat skimpy. But its job was to cover, not reveal. That was Cheri Ikerd's argument when she sued a Belmont Shore boutique owner who refused to give her a refund for a bikini she said turned transparent when wet: "It was so transparent, it was like wearing cellophane." Long Beach Municipal Judge G. William Dunn, shown photos of the 26-year-old woman in the wet bikini, agreed. "She was, in fact, apparently naked," Dunn said last week.

Re "From Page Six to NBC4," by Greg Braxton, Aug. 19: As a former Philadelphian, I am sadly well-acquainted with Alycia Lane's anchoring, and as a current Los Angeleno, I'm astounded that we are soon to be saddled with her at KNBC. What an insult to this city. Did she audition by sending her bikini pix to the program director? Annika Katzenberg Beverly Hills

Upon reviewing the Feb. 1-7 Television Times, I would like to pose a question to those individuals in charge of local programming for our network affiliates: Is that the best you can do? The week's locally produced features covered such informative topics as L.A.'s professional cheerleaders, office romance, bikini styles and tours of exotic beaches. All in one week. This was really a sad testimonial to the caliber of creativity/responsibility available in Hollywood, the purported entertainment capital of the world.

Was the Gulf War over before you were ready? Do you miss Duke and his Club Scud? Would a desert-camouflage bikini be just the thing for your own Boopsie? Take a walk down memory dune at Aerial, the nation's first retail outlet for Great Doonesbury Sellout items, heretofore available only by catalogue. Doonesbury Co., the Sausalito marketer, may also expand to Los Angeles soon. The hottest seller has been the $15 Mr. Butts ashtray. "Thanks for smoking!" it says. "Go ahead. You're immortal."

In the third TV Sweeps week, it looks like the local ratings battle is developing into a two-way titillation contest between Channels 2 and 7. 2's taking a weeklong look at L.A. dating ("Checking out the Meet Market"). Reporter Steve Kmetko asks, "What's being served up in the Southland single scene? Are shoppers getting what they want?"

Two well-known designers of menswear express varying opinions on what's right today in the following interviews reported by Fashion85 staff writers Betty Goodwin and Mary Rourke. During his honeymoon last fall on the Caribbean island of St. Martin, Lee Wright sunbathed in men's cotton underwear. Not just any underwear, you understand, but fuchsia bikini underwear, which Wright designed himself, using his own body, as he puts it, as "a barometer of comfort."

So far as I know, I was the first in countless generations of my family to wear a bikini. That is, I probably have been more scantily clad in a public place than most--if not all--of my female ancestors since the loincloth era. My photo albums document the diminution of swimwear in the 20th century. I have shots of my grandmother and her sisters at Rehobeth Beach, Del., in the 1920s in saggy, striped knit, knee-length woolen suits said to have weighed two pounds dry and eight pounds wet.