Arizona republican., 1920-07-25
ABOUT BATHING SUITS

approval, though it still shocks some people and is barred at good many beaches. When police headquarters and beach superintendents get recon ciled to it the bathing suit will pre- sumably change again-that is, if its past can be taken for the future-for the bathing suit has always been steadily changing institution based on the principle of novelty and checks
 Bathing Long Ago
 No one has. apparently, written complete history of this important gar ment, or even treatise showing it's influence on history.
 Out of the bathing suits hay past a few scenes stand out in relief. One of these Is a description of the German baths at Baden nearly a century be- l fore Columbus started out to make America famous. The report is by a Roman gentleman who travelled to the baths for gout and who was. as the neighbors had said he would be, alto gether surprised. He wrote a letter to a friend about it, and years later it was published as an example of what awful things the Europeans used to do. | What the Roman visitor saw was very like an aquatic cabaret. The ladies floated about in the water wear ing Greek draperies and wreaths of roses. They flirted and excnangec shafts of wit with the large audience ! shore to applaud. Gentlemen on the sidelines flung roses and coins into the water to the prettiest girls, and the mermaids, the debutantes of the mid dle ages, dived for them and quarreled pleasantly among themselves for the favors. Men who came in where the ladies were taking the water wore l garments something like linen dusters.
 Meals Served in the Water At dinner time tables bearing meals were floated out so that the bathers could get the benefit of the medicinal waters while enjoying a dinner party l Afterwards those present played games at the floating tables. or sang and played musical instruments in the water.
 The bathing suits of the time were, as we have mentioned, of linen or muslin, though at some resorts where men and women bathed separately a necklace and a wreath of flowers were considered adequate costume.
 | After this, there is a gap in the bath ing suits career. By 1860 men were | beginning to wear one-piece suits as the practical thing for swimming, but l the women were all seved up in blue length bloomers and a knee length l skirt besides, for extra protection. Even at that it was not considered quite proper for ladies to appear in pubic Tn bathing suits, especially If | men were bathing nearby.
 | The radicals of the day took great pains to demonstrate that these en- veloping bathing suits were modes and suitable and insisted that eventually the public gould get used to them. But as soon as the public stopped talking about the ultra fashionable bathing suit of 1860, beach styles skipped along to a point where people could continue to be shocked. Boomers got shorter, necxs got lower, sleeves vanished. until the one piece bathing spit for women was evolved.
 Where the bathing suit can go from the one piece affair is a question which a conservative minded person would hesitate to answer. The Annette is | already a masterpiece as to conserva- ton of material and strictly business like cut. Maybe, like the human race. the piece bathing suit is a finished product.