The Lay of the Land
   The late 1960s are a time a simultaneous contrasts. In popular American media, string halters and nombril briefs remain the norm. Sideties resonate on the unfastening theme and very low waistlines uncover bellage and rugage.   Powered by California beach party movies, pinup stars like Raquel Welch and Usurla Andress gain popularity. Advertising employs bikinis and bikini styles infect lingerie styles. In One Million Years B.C. Welch’s “first bikini” is her only costume; it becomes an instant planetary icon. By the end of the decade she is flaunting an Americana them and commanding a gallery of rowers in an equally revealing costume. Bra cups are often cut low enough to display inches of cleavage if not tease areola.
   In a world of topless, pasties and nipple decoration also acquire validity.
   As the bikini shrinks smaller and smaller it becomes obvious that if this trend is to continue that something must give. And that something is the bikini top, the soutien-gorge.

Go Topless!?
   Topless is and has been a common mode of dress throughout history and been recounted by travelers and imagers since the earliest societies emerged. It is more prevalent in tropical climates than temperate ones, and attempts by Europeans to repress the practice abroad have met with limited success. Obviously, the success of topless beaches on Europe’s own shores reverses the mission to more fully cloth the tropical types.
   The first foray is a broadside, fired by American fashion designer Rudi Gernreich in 1964. Gernreich considers the solo bikini bottom but feels it is simply evolutionary, “not a design,” and creates a strapped topless maillot instead. Gernreich arranges for William Claxton to photograph his wife, Peggy Moffett, and presents the pictures to the fashion press. The first photograph of Gernreich’s design, a back view, is published in Look on June 2, 1964, and the first front view is shown by Women’s Wear Daily the following day. Newsweek prints a back view on June 8th.
   Gernreich’s topless maillot might have remained a fashion footnote but instead it is catapulted into national attention when a 19 year-old model, Toni Lee Shelley, wears Gernreich’s creation on a Chicago beach in late June and is arrested and charged with indecent exposure. That news makes the national wire services and Life Magazine .
   Two weeks later, Life compliments this coverage with a fashion feature on the broader subject. Life tells photographer Bill Claxton that “this is a family magazine, and naked breasts are only allowed if the woman is an aborigine.” But they agree to run a photograph of Moffett wearing the suit but with her crisscrossed arms diplomatically blocking her nipples. Life does display the full-figured costume, but underwater, in what is perhaps one of the most interesting censorships of all time. These two treatments of Gernreich’s maillot reflect Life’s uncertainty about dealing with the topless issue directly. What they elected not to show was Peggy Moffitt without her arms blocking her nipples.
   Life assures its readers that toplessness is not a new phenomenon, and briefs them on the Minoans and Greeks. They could also have reminded their readers about “primitive” costumes; all of a sudden primitive costumes were no longer primitive, they are simply simultaneous with the topless. Bikini Atol redoute.
   The social reaction, in America at least, is one of shock. Gernreich quickly invents the see-through, the no-bra bra, and eventually claims tanga; he becomes famous. Toplessness might be permitted for young prepubescent girls, like a seven year old Natalie Wood in Life and to tots running around on the beach, but no such exception is made for developed adults. None the less, Gernreich predicts that women will shed their tops within five years.
   Very few women wear the suit in public. One of them is Carol Doda, the San Francisco topless entertainer, who dances wearing one in the Condor Club of Los Angeles. Playboy magazine documents her appearance in its April 1965 issue.