The High-Cut Swimsuit

Swimwear tells you a lot about a decade's ideal body, and the 1980s had a very particular one: long legs, a toned, athletic figure, and a high waist. The high-cut swimsuit was designed to create exactly that look. Its defining feature is the leg opening, cut dramatically upward over the hip, sometimes nearly to the waist, so the leg appears to start much higher than it actually does.

The gym helped make the shape mainstream. The aerobics boom put millions of women in high-cut leotards, worn over tights with leg warmers, and the aerobics silhouette made the high leg line look sporty, fit, and modern. Taking that line to the beach was a short step. Swimwear made from nylon and spandex could fit very closely and stay in place, which made such a high cut practical. The suits came in bright solid colours, neon, animal prints, and bold graphics, often with low backs, cut-outs, or thong backs by the end of the decade.

Norma Kamali is the designer most closely associated with the look. She had been making swimwear since the 1970s - her red one-piece became famous in 1976 as the swimsuit in a best-selling Farrah Fawcett poster - and in the 1980s her high-leg, body-sculpting swimsuits were widely copied. The look became part of the decade's image of the healthy, athletic woman, seen in fitness videos, advertising, and magazine swimsuit issues. The red high-cut swimsuits of the TV series Baywatch, which began in 1989, later fixed the style in popular memory.

I find the high-cut swimsuit interesting because it shows how much fashion was shaped by fitness in the 1980s. Swimwear had once been about modesty, as the Victorian bathing dress shows, and then about glamour, as with the 1930s maillot. In the 1980s, it became about showing off a body you had worked to build. That's a big shift - and the pressure that came with it is part of the story too.