Annette Kellerman: The Swimmer Who Popularised the One-Piece
Annette Kellerman was an Australian champion swimmer who swam the Thames for a newspaper, tried to swim the English Channel at least three times, performed underwater ballet in a glass tank on three continents, and sold one-piece bathing suits under her own name for the better part of twenty-five years. By the 1910s, "an Annette Kellerman" was a name for that style of swimsuit.
She is remembered instead for being arrested on a Boston beach in 1907 for wearing one. That story is repeated by encyclopaedias, museums and halls of fame, and nobody has found a contemporary record of it. The…
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