Bikini

Doubtless 1996 includes the 50th birthdays of many life-enhancing inventions. But has any other brought so much joy to user and watcher? The great photographers of the Magnum agency have not let it pass unrecorded

The mushroom cloud that rose above Bikini Atoll on 30 June, 1946, was the physical evidence of the first post-War atom bomb test, an image that was to strike fear into several generations. Its namesake, launched three weeks later at a Paris fashion show, was the invention of a French engineer, Louis Reard. Its impact was similarly shattering.

Early bikinis may not look skimpy now, but they did then. Predating Schumacher's "small is beautiful" philosophy by two-and-a-half decades, they proved his point to perfection. No garment has been worn by more people of inappropriate shape or size; no garment has aroused so many, so strongly, for so long.

Reard started his bikini daringly: his initial design was a cutaway. The one-piece swimsuit, glamorous for so long, overnight became just - a swimsuit. Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot, Ursula Andress: bikini-clad images burnt into the brains of middle-aged men.

Perhaps we have moved on from the bikini. Beach toplessness, beach thongness, beach nakedness mean that the bikini is no longer minimalism. But what goes around, comes around, especially in fashion. Minoan wall paintings from 1600bc show two-pieces. No doubt within the next 4,000 years there will come another moment when the newly reinvented two-piece swimsuit leaves the world breathless