Added: 01/28/2006 |
Selecting the Swim Apparel That's Right for YouThe swim apparel required hundreds of years to become that swimsuit and wet suit we know. There is not much information on how ancient Greeks bathed. However, at their cult of a body, obviously, they counted abnormal everyone who dressed before bathing.
Romans, going from the Forum to Tiber, came into locker rooms. From medieval engravings, we learn that people bathed only in baths and frequently naked. Down to the 19th century, it occurred that nobody swam for a while in the river, unless of drop. At the end of a century the beach suit appeared. However, it resembled a dress for walks but not the swim apparel.
During the passage of time, there were no special clothes for bathing and no swim apparel as it was. People took water procedures naked, in certain coverlets or in clothes at all. Therefore, citizens of Ancient Rome carried togas during bathing for example (a semicircular piece of a matter with dredging for a gate).
After falling of the Roman Empire, the tradition of acceptance of water procedures has been lost for hundreds of years. Bathing in seawaters and the rivers again have started to join only in the 18th century when resorts began to appear along the coasts of France and England. There were no beaches in our present understanding, certainly, and instead of them there were special swimming baths directly on water (man's and female separately). However, as well as all reviving, the way at tradition of bathing was thorny.
Familiarizing people with safety water procedures went very slowly: for a long time a very few people dared to come into water. There was no swimming and diving at all. Men and women - everyone on the separate side of a beach - were trembled down on shallow water, splashed, at times squatted and the most desperate floundered in water. Nevertheless, such sea bathing was a rarity.
The concepts of a swim apparel suit and swim cap did not exist either. Women bathed in dress which a little than differed from daily (unless a style). The bathing clothes were far from a practicality and convenience. People paid no attention to style. As unique criterion, the modesty served. More often, women entered the water in a dress in length to toe, with a corsage, and even with a crinoline. Under a dress, there was dense linen, stockings and textile shoes or boots. The cap was on a head usually. Quite often women sewed metal subjects to a hem of a dress, so that the dress was not lifted up in water. It is necessary to say that women were clamped in such close frameworks of reserves and decencies down to the beginning of the 20th century.
In 1909, the world champion of swimming Adeline Muhlenberg excited the world. She declared that the corset and long trousers represented danger in water and crossed passage in a suit from one part. Her follower (Anita Coleman, the Australian swimmer on long distances) swam only in linen. In Boston, she was immediately arrested. However, the shortening of swim apparel suit could not be stopped already. Young girls started to go on beach in short skirts.
It was about time.
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