OK maybe I’m six month’s late in commenting on Sao Paulo Fashion Week but that’s not really the point of today’s rant. Today’s rant comes as a result of all those seeking info on how to make Brazilian bikini bottoms stay in place … you know who you are!!
Below are a few YouTube videos on various designers and general swimwear from the South American home of swimwear. Now we know Brazil is all about the smallest possible swimwear back, but can we all step back for a second and ask the question “why doesn’t any of it fit properly?”. I’m starting to wonder if the swimwear has been designed to ride up and gather in a messy fashion between the cheeks deliberately, or if they’ve been so poorly designed that they don’t sit properly on even the tiniest and tightest of bodies (or maybe that might actually be the problem??). I’ve always considered that if you want a garment stuck inside the cheeks then you design a thong … not a garment that creates a large uncomfortable bulk or slowly rides with each step you take. A true Brazilian back, as narrow as it may be, is supposed to sit flat and tight. Take a look at the videos and you’ll see these bottoms have about a third to a quarter width at the waist band. The pattern piece is not a thong but a very narrow bikini bottom … it’s just so narrow it can’t hold its width on the body and collapses in between the cheek, becoming a thong.
Now I’m not overly conservative (heck you could say I have a slight bottom fetish after my recent posts) and I love to see a great body, but these garments (as beautiful as they may appear on such exceptional bodies) just grate on my nerves as being ill-fitting. Am I the only one who thinks this? I’m of the opinion they should be cut wide enough to at least fit the models or be turned into a thong so the model don’t break her coccyx on the bulk when she sits down!
Now let’s contrast this with Miami’s Fashion Week. Poko Pano Swimwear is equally well known for it’s Brazilian bottom swimwear, in both bikinis and one pieces. However these look a lot better than the ones above because they sit flatter … or in my eyes, they look like they are where they were designed to be … still small, but in place (mostly). Heck even Vitamin A Swimwear gets a better score from me on their Brazilian fit.
My question then comes to economics for a moment. Who are the target audience. Young teenage girls, early twenties, late twenties or thirty somethings? What size groups? Extra extra small through to small … small to medium only … or small to large? Has this design yet fallen out of ready to wear and into niche? Don’t get me wrong … the tiniest of Wicked Weasel swimwear is one of Australia’s largest swimwear brands, but we’re still talking niche market Internet sales. When a garment has got to the point that it won’t sit properly on anything but a perfectly toned waif (is there such a thing?) is it really ready to wear fashion anymore?
The answer is quite simple. Surfwear is all about profit and much less about fashion … you won’t get Brazilians this narrow from your average surfwear brand! … and don’t go quoting me comments like high fashion because you can buy some of these brands very cheap off the internet … and considering they’re mostly unlined, digitally printed, light-weight polyester knits they’re no better quality than the average surfwear either! The real high fashion brands like Gottex, for example, don’t seem to suffer from hungry bum. As a quick side point I also noticed a few more high cut 80′s leg lines (at least from a front perspective) in the Gottex collection.
“No matter how tight or loose I make the leg elastic I can’t stop it [the bikini] becoming a thong. It doesn’t even work without the elastic. Is my pattern too narrow? The shop ones are smaller so how can this be? ….
…. I’ve curved the leg line out faster at the top so it [the bikini] doesn’t hide more cheek and it’s pulled out more by the strap but it still goes into a thong lower down. What am I doing wrong and how do I fix it?”
OK let’s quit the rant for a second and take a pattern making perspective. Current bikini bottom styles are about cheek exposure. This is achieved two ways: either a narrow top at the waistband, or a narrow crotch seam angling out quickly to a more conventional width at the waist band (more typical on one pieces), or a bit of both. Historically, the Brazilian is about a third width at the waist band, 6.5-7cm at the crotch and 6-6.5cm at the crotch seam a few cms toward the back. These measurements don’t change much across the sizes. Now the problem comes when the crotch seam width is maintained but the width at the waist band is narrowed. What happens is you have to lengthen the back panel to kill it’s tension or it immediately dives between the cheeks, but when you add elastic to the panel, the curve of the cheek lets it slide in with each step until that tension is finally gone … resulting in a garment that’s half ridden up only and looks like it’s loose. This is the case in the top three links … the 6-6.5cm width at the crotch seam area is visible in a number of garments … thus their curved leg line has made a back panel that’s actually too long at the edge and able to kill the elastic tension by falling beetween the cheeks (as opposed to using the elastic tension to hold the garment slightly out on the cheeks).
If the crotch seam is narrowed, but not the width at the waistband, the garment takes a slight dive between the cheeks earlier, but pulls out flat across the cheek quickly and is normal at the top so you never get the thong effect. This looks slightly better, but will still creep up over time and you’ll get the little 45 degree ripples around the coccyx area as the elastic tension releases (Poko Pano and Vitamin A).
In order to sit flat, you need width at the crotch seam and width at the waistband and most importantly (but most often not realised) a relatively straight leg line between the two points (a curve encourages movement between curved cheeks – effective elastic length). Only Gottex seems to have got this right – go figure! Lastly you sometimes need to decrease the overall tension around the waistband (slightly less negative ease) to kill any chance of the leg elastic causing the garment to rise. This is not the same as reducing elastic tension around the coccyx area only … that’s a plain stupid misunderstanding of how elastic works!
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IM addition to fit issues, watching these tiny women gallumphing down the runway is really painful. You can just hear the clomp-clomp-clomp of their shoes.
Stuart,
I totally agree with you. Nice post about the fit on swimwear, and no…there’s no such thing as a perfectly toned waif! Bones just can’t hold a curve! Poko Pano’s collection was beautifully done I thought.
I personally could never wear anything like what is going down the runway but I just can’t imagine a woman wants to buy something and then be constantly pulling fabric out of that region. A little rainbow curve over the cheeks looks the most flattering. The triangle swatch of Paola Robba just looked like what it was…a triangle piece of fabric.
I love your new site!
Cathy
The market may well be obsessed with as few seams as possible, but you don’t get shape out of something large and flat without putting a seam somewhere. I don’t like the use of excessive seams for the sake of it beause its quite simply a machining cost you don’t need … but I will use one to create a better fitting shape. You don’t need a crotch seam on a brazilian cut bikini bottom to enhance fit unless it’s used with a center back seam as well. Seams are usually a matter of design … removing them saves cost so they call it a feature in order to increase sales … it’s got nothing to do with comfort or visible seam lines under a garment … don’t be fooled!
The final wetsuit will get put together professionally using a curved needle on a swing arm machine. I’m simply butt gluing the toile with rubber contact adhesive and then zig-zagging over the seam to hold it together (the way it used to be done years ago). The toile doesn’t need to be waterproof so this works fine for pattern experiments … and is remarkably strong!
I totally agree with what you are saying, the problem with the market is the obsession with as few seams as possible: victoria’s secret seamless underwear. People wrongly think that seams are a problem.
On a different note, were you using an overlock stitch for the wetsuits? What kind of machine?