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Two-Pièce de Résistance: Elle and Kathy, 1990

I’ve often referred to this as the greatest photo ever taken.

Photo: Robert Huntzinger

It’s got everything. Two SI stars in their prime. Magnificent candy-colored bikinis in platonic-ideal cuts. A front view alongside a back view.

Readers opened the February 12, 1990 issue to pages 126-127 to see these ladies, bled to the edges of what should have been but inexplicably wasn’t the centerfold.

Although I have stated that an overabundance of nearly-identical poses in the same suit is a shortcoming of the modern swimsuit issue, making it harder to pinpoint single, iconic shots, I do have to praise some variants of this shot that are floating around the internet.

The subtle differences in poses — arms, heads, legs — give you a little taste of what the shoot would have been like, almost creating a flip-book in your mind: Watch Elle and Kathy luxuriating side by side, gently writhing their semi-submerged bodies. My head swims to think about it.

The caption describes them as keeping cool in the “Cotton House pool” on the private island of Mustique.

There are a couple of pools on the Cotton House resort grounds, each of which features a curve along the edge. But based on the tiling, I think this must be the pool at “The Residence,” a private suite with rates I’m not even going to bother looking up, so it’s one swimsuit mecca I will never visit except through these photos.

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Judit Masco, 1990

I’m not really a breast man, but dang.

Photo: Robert Huntzinger

This photo makes me understand them. These are masterpieces.

The netted top drapes casually and translucently over them, and Judit, apparently just fine with it, tosses us a smile. You can almost see her tilt her head back for a friendly nod as you pass her on the beach. (She’s staying at a neighboring cabin.)

This was over a decade before the great de-nippling of Sports Illustrated, and this is probably the kind of photo that got them temporarily banned in the first place.

The bikini bottom, color-coordinated with the net and the flippers and the bracelet, is a sweet, smooth, yellow triangle. But one fun detail is the twist on the strap above her hip.

In this magazine, swimsuits tend to be form-fitting and pristine. We want the suits, even if they’re not actually painted on, to look painted on.

But here, whether or not it’s intentional, the tiny twist implies casualness.

There’s a companion photo.

Here we see Judit from behind. Maybe we’ve been watching her go back and forth with her flippers and her bag of … dry clothes? Shells? This time, perhaps she’s a little less patient with our stare. Her mouth is caught mid-sentence, as if she’s saying, “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

But from this angle we also see her hair, mussed and beachy, tied up with a bandana. The top is a little ragged, now that you mention it. And her bikini bottom is a little loose, ever so slightly saggy, not the shrinkwrap that most SI swimsuits are.

These photos are a teensy bit ramshackle, at least compared to most others. It feels like a beach — not a fantasy beach, but a more visceral one, with the humid air and a mild sunburn and a little sand in your shoes. I think Judit looks a bit more down-to-earth, maybe even touchable, as a result.

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Jessica Gomes, 2009

This was Jessica’s sophomore year, and the year she nestled into my brain as one of my all-time favorite models.

Photo: Steve Erle

She was mostly in tans and earth tones that year, and a lot of her shots take place against this craggy, grey wasteland, making the shoot less beachy, more post-apocalyptic.

This is the opposite of a high-cut suit, but it is no less sexy for it. It taps into my love of the full-body sheath of a one-piece, but moreso. Then it adds a wonderful wet cling — psychedelic swirls where the fabric hugs her, alongside a few islands where it’s drier, or where there’s a bit of space between the suit and her body.

There’s a lot of engaging detail, I guess is what I’m saying.

Top it off with a cleavage-window and Jessica’s sly “I know what you’re thinking” side-eye, and it combines everything I love about her.

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Ashley Richardson, 1991

I know she’s the Queen of the One-Piece, but …

Photo: Walter Iooss Jr.

… this is a perfect bikini pic.

It’s actually remarkably similar to Karen Mulder’s shot from six years later. Blonde bombshell, swervy pose, turquoise bikini. I guess I have a “type.”

But Ashley’s pose is more presentational. Here’s a head-on look at her magnificent, voluptuous body. A platonic ideal of a bikini top and bottom, laid out upon Ashley for our enjoyment.

For me, there’s a kind of silliness to the pose as well. The tousled hair, the pressed-together thighs, the pouty lips aimed off to the heavens … It’s like she’s doing a parody of a sexy pose, “playing at” being a bathing beauty.

When you watch Ashley in her making-of videos, she clearly has a sense of humor. She goofs around, cracks jokes, and seems to relish the bizarreness of what she’s doing: prancing through the snow in a swimsuit, straddling a fence in a swimsuit, lathering soap bubbles on her chest while thigh-deep in a jacuzzi in a swimsuit, etc.

In a lot of behind-the-scenes SI videos, a girl will pull an exaggerated, silly “sexy” move, like winking at the camera or wriggling her hips or blowing a kiss. The wonderful thing is, their cartoonish, ironic sexiness still comes across as sexy. They can’t escape it, no matter how corny they try to make it.

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Jessica White, 2009

Jessica deserved a cover.

Photo: Raphael Mazzucco

She put together an eight-year reign, which is impressive. 2009 was her sixth appearance.

This might not be the best photo of her — there are plenty that make a beautiful display of her full, stellar body — but there’s something about this one that makes me stop and stare.

There are several layers of teasing here.

There’s the direct and confident eye contact, almost a dare directed at the viewer.

Then her top is undone, which is a standard go-to teasing move. The thumb-hook, the free-hip, the objects-as-improvised-top — the hint at impending nudity is a button SI presses regularly.

And there’s something sexy about that bite. Mouths are easily sexualized, whether the model is biting a hot dog or a straw or her fingernail. But offhand, I can’t think of another photo in all of SI history where the model is closing her mouth around her own swimsuit.

And I know not everyone is as perverted as I am, but I can’t be the only person whose mind drifts to a gag being gently inserted between her teeth? No? Just me? Moving on.

Jessica was a solid and statuesque beauty with a long and gorgeous tenure. One of the greats of her decade.

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Jarah Mariano, 2008

Jarah is an unsung hero of the swimsuit issue.

Photo: Stewart Shining

This was her rookie year of two years in the magazine. She’s breathtaking.

I think she’s got a following of her own. I know she’s done some Victoria’s Secret and maybe a few lad rags? But she should be more exalted in SI than she is.

I put her at the halfway point of my top-50 ranking of swimsuit models back in 2013, but it’s still a pleasant surprise when I see her. “Oh right! Jarah Mariano!”

This photo is just so … pretty.

Everything about it is very feminine. Pink bikini, not too modest but not overly skimpy, with a sparkly design. A fragrant-looking lei draped around her neck. An elegant, curvy pose, soft smile, wisps of hair caressed by the breeze.

I once declared that this photo could have been a cover. In fact, I think it’s a much better image than Marisa’s cover that year. She even angles her head and upper body as if to accommodate the Sports Illustrated title across the top.

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Christie Brinkley, 1981

Christie’s swimsuits got progressively smaller over the course of her three consecutive covers.

Photo: John G. Zimmerman

And while skimpier does not equal sexier, I think this is her sexiest cover.

This bikini is minuscule even by today’s standards. Its three or four different shades of purple and its desert-island tatters give it a haphazard patchwork look, and you can imagine being shipwrecked with Christie during this breathtaking sunrise. A flock of birds swells behind her; she seems to have summoned them with her superheroine sex appeal. Amidst it all, she meets your gaze with a bold, confident all-American girl grin.

I feel like this cover introduced the 80s and the golden age of the swimsuit issue. This was the rookie year of both Carol Alt and Kelly Emberg. A year later, Kim Alexis sauntered in. A year after that, we’d meet Paulina Porizkova. Then Kathy Ireland. Then Elle Macpherson. This issue was the starter pistol for a decade of SI household names.

But at that moment, we had Christie in all her Brinkleyness.

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Julie Henderson, 2012

This is a very Julie Henderson pic.

Photo: James Macari

I think 2012 was a year of too much retouching, so unfortunately her skin looks a little supernatural in its smoothness. But happily, her freckles remain. I think those, along with the tousled hair and the lazy, matter-of-fact look she’s giving us, emphasize Julie’s girl-next-doorness that holds such appeal for me. This pic exudes the casual and joyful warmth she shows in her behind-the-scenes interviews.

And the body, in that classic lying-on-her-side bathing beauty pose, transcends a bit of retouching. That hip-curve. That pretty crease down the center of her midriff. That sparse smattering of grains of sand. That low-slung, electric lime bikini bottom. It looks like a grey day on the beach, but that just serves to enhance her warm, massageable skin and neon swimsuit.

It’s a good old-fashioned bikini pose, and Julie strikes it beautifully.

Two-Pièce de Résistance: All-Star Cover Girls, 2006

I know I’m on record saying that more than two girls in a single photo is overkill. But …

Photo: Raphael Mazzucco

This one is different. These girls aren’t posing. They’re standing around in an unguarded moment. Some them seem to be laughing at a comment one of them made. They’re not twisting their bodies or finding their light or trying to tilt their “best sides” to the camera. They’re just … kind of … standing there. Being beautiful.

This particular shot is from Mazzucco’s book Exposure. The shoot is full of sultry, posed shots: one girl, two girls, all eight girls, purring at the camera, lounging on the sand, resting their bodies upon other bodies. “Heaven” is a great title for Walter Iooss Jr.’s swimsuit book, but it might even be more appropriate for Mazzucco’s. The fact that they’re all in white lends it an extra sense of eternal paradise.

I mean, good lord.

There’s something I find amazing about multi-girl shoots that I don’t think I’ve mentioned before.

Sara and Gigi, Julie and Jessica, Angie and Rebecca, Ashley and everyone — each girl knows she’s not only offering up her body as a male fantasy, she’s also allowing herself to be half that male fantasy. She’s collaborating with another model, knowing she won’t even be the exclusive focus of the male gaze. It’s that “objectification” thing I keep trying to describe (without sounding like a creep) — but multiplied.

Even now, after decades of looking at the swimsuit issue, I still have this joyful bewilderment that the models are okay with us looking. It’s that “permission” I’ve mentioned before. Every time a model in an interview makes some fun, winking, giggly reference to how small her swimsuit is, or how much skin she’s exposing, it brings a smile to my face. And here we have eight smiling models, all in on it together.

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Rachel Hunter, 1989

This photo is relentlessly hot.

Photo: Marc Hispard

In every sense of the word. Rachel’s magnificent body. The warm oranges and yellows. And you can almost see the Mexican heat glistening off the page.

There’s a palpable relief from the shadow the sombrero casts over her face, which also taps into my mild “thing” about the model’s eyes being obscured.

She braces herself against her shadow and takes on a “cowgirl in repose” position, as if she’s about to hand-roll a cigarillo while waitin’ for the horses to finish drinking at the trough, but that’s just another playful pinup act. Tiny and pretty bottoms in their high 1980s cut, a playful top slung low off her shoulders: The femininity radiates from her absolutely stellar curves.

Rachel was a great one.

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Esti Ginzburg, 2009

Esti is one of the great underappreciated models of the past decade.

Photo: Riccardo Tinelli

This might be the first image that comes to mind when I think of her.

Most of her photos in her three-year career showed off her kewpie-doll cuteness, tempered with her endearing, slightly crooked smile. But this photo turns her into an intense Caravaggio painting, chiaroscuro caressing the contours of a magnificent bikini body. The carved abs, the lovely breasts, the thumbs inching the bottoms down from both hips.

Most thumb-hook shots feature the girl looking directly at the camera, usually with a smile or a glare of seduction on her face. Thumb-hooking is an action born from playfulness; the model is deliberately teasing you, the viewer.

But Esti here doesn’t even seem to be aware that we’re here. Is she alone, lost in thought, absently fiddling with her suit? Is she doing this for the benefit of some other viewer, off stage left? Or is she just a magnificent sculpture of an Italian sex goddess, in keeping with the statue theme of her Naples shoot?

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Bregje Heinen, 2014

Every year, SI includes at least one suit that seems custom-chosen to reinforce my love of one-piecers. Bregje’s is one for my hall of fame.

Photo: Raphael Mazzucco

The sharp, high-cut suit clings perfectly to Bregje’s long, lean, praying mantis body in her classic side-lounge swimsuit-girl pose. She meets your gaze with her otherworldly eyes

She’s a slash of black against a desert landscape, kind of a negative of Kate’s entry. Bright, hot sky and sand, then a deep, black shape absorbing all light and your eyes.

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Monique Moura de Carvalho, 1978

Absolutely beautiful shot.

Photo: Walter Iooss Jr.

This Monique shot is in the same vein as Coco’s: swimsuit enhanced by environment. It’s a frame of Wes Anderson symmetry, with a brown wedge of boat and skin thrusting into a breathtaking landscape of giant lily pads, featuring a perfect bikini design (and derrière).

There’s a certain something to a shot where you don’t see the model’s face. To me, it’s kind of like a lite version of the body-only shots, but a bit more subtle and moody. When I used to update the title banner on this blog every month, I cropped the photos so you didn’t see the girl’s eyes — or occasionally one eye would peek out, but not the other. Just seeing the swimsuited body under a smiling mouth taps into the thrill of objectification I mentioned in my last post.

In discussing his book “Heaven,” Iooss talked about this photo:

“The lily-pads picture in Brazil is one of my favorites.... This was like the swamp of swamps. This is where the first creature crawled out of, that’s what you felt like.... I’m on the boat, and you’re straddling it, and the boat’s just wiggling. Someone’s trying to hold it in the back, but it was very difficult.... This was the perfect suit, the little green-and-yellow suit. We put her in a hat, and bingo. You know, things happened.”

The guy knew what he was doing.

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Yamila Diaz, 1999

It’s downright barbaric how small and low-res the online pics were in 1999. SI needs to remaster these old photos. 

Photo: Dominique Issermann

This photo of Yamila appeared in the margins of the introduction to the ’99 issue. You might see it as a “genie in a bottle” image, which is what the magazine’s caption writer went with: “There’s no getting this bikini back in the bottle.”

But to me it seems more like she’s spilling out of the jar. Like, in this world, beautiful women come in giant clay jars, and I’ve just opened this one, and I’ve poured Yamila out on the beach, and she’s lounging, sun-kissed, on the sand, smiling expectantly at me, ready for whatever I might have in mind.

I suppose those two “What is it you wish?” scenarios aren’t that different.


“Objectification” is a charged word in this realm. It’s a word that’s hurled at the swimsuit issue, and similar sexy-lady endeavors, as an accusation of sexism. And I don’t think that’s entirely unfair. These are flesh-and-blood human beings, not toys or decorations.

The way I rationalized it way back in my adolescence was: The woman is not an object, but the photograph is.

For better or worse, the image triggers a false sense of connection with the woman. We’re looking at her, but she’s looking at a camera lens.

And for that matter, we’re not really looking at her, but at a flat surface simulating her via a series of photons reflected off of —

Anyway.

But even the feminist author of this highly critical book about the swimsuit issue states that objectification isn’t inherently bad, in the right conditions. I’d say there’s a playful, consensual objectification that happens in relationships and flirting. Imagine the rush of having a woman smile at you and say, “So what do you wanna do to me?”

And I think that’s what’s at play in swimsuit photography. It doesn’t seem cruel or dehumanizing to me. Just some sexy women enjoying being sexy for an audience they know is appreciative. They’re presenting themselves to us, of their own volition, fully aware of where our eyes will wander.

And maybe it’s just my perverted mind at work, but Yamila’s pose up there seems to tap into the playful objectification angle a little extra. It joins the ranks of photos like Rebecca on a banquet table. Kathy in a cage.* Paulina in a (literal) fishnet.

This is tangentially related, maybe, but this video comes to mind of Sara Sampaio and Gigi Hadid, as rookies, quizzing people — male and female — at some resort. Two of their questions, “Which butt is whose?” and “Who’s hotter, blondes or brunettes?” are certainly cases of the models objectifying themselves.

(Are you a butt man?” Sara asks a gentleman early in the video.)

They compete for attention, stumping for votes in the Battle of the Hair Colors. 

Gigi, upon hearing a woman declare that brunettes are hotter: “I need all boys to please report to here!”

Sara, on her knees, after a man says he prefers blondes: “Why? We’re hotter!”

I don’t think you’d see this video made now, a mere six years later. It’s a little too on-the-nose for SI’s current brand, in which they try to blend the blatant T&A into more of a general “Celebration of Beauty!” attitude.

Anyway. Yamila’s super hot. This is a great photo of her.


*I don’t think this "caged Kathy" photo was ever in the magazine, but I found it on Robert Huntzinger’s site surrounded by other SI pics.

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Estelle Lefebure, 1993

Score another point for Team Shiny.

Photo: Paul Lange

There are two photos of Estelle I love equally, this gold one and the green one I featured here. I think this one is fun to contemplate from a composition standpoint.

I’ve shared some photos lately where the model is either enhanced by or contrasting with the background. This one is almost monochromatic. The photo is made up entirely of various shades of tan. Estelle stands out by dint of the shiny curves of her swimsuit and the soft smoothness of her skin, otherwise it’s a “polar bear in a snowstorm” joke come to life.

She stands statuesque in what we can imagine is a hostile, windswept environment where a beautiful girl pines in sexy anguish. She looks a bit like a damsel on the cover of a romance novel. You almost expect her to lay the back of her wrist against her forehead in melodramatic woe.

Anyway, that’s my fantasy about this shot. To others, it may simply be a swimsuit girl lounging near a beach just out of view. But it’s always seemed more dramatic to me.

Personal history: When I was in college, I had this page neatly sliced out of the magazine and hanging on a shelving unit in my dorm room. Well, unbeknownst to me, the dorm started replacing the shelving units in all the rooms, so one day I got home from class to find a new shelf above my desk, with this page gently removed and replaced upon it.

I always thought that was very considerate of the contractors.

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Stacey Williams, 1997

One feature that shows up in this series a lot: shiny swimsuits.

Photo: Walter Iooss Jr

Is it some primal attraction to reflections? Is it the way the glare seems to focus on points of the model’s body like a magnifying glass? Is it the subtle shimmers that help outline the contours of the curves?

Who knows? I like shiny swimsuits, and I’m obviously not alone, because there are a ton of them. This wasn’t even the only shiny Stacey pic in the running for this post.

In any case, I very much disfruto this image. It’s a great representative from the all-bikini 1997 issue — the bikini is perfect, and not least of all because Stacey is occupying it.

Stacey has so many beautiful shots. Usually she’s smiling warmly or leveling those languid, hypnotic eyes at us. But here she’s gazing off, momentarily oblivious in her own world, fingertip to mouth, clearly fantasizing about some intensely pleasurable activity, like maybe drinking a Coke.

The pose is a variation on the classic Buddha pose, but her top leg is pulled up a little, like she’s absently writhing, luxuriating at the feel of her own skin-on-skin.

It’s an almost unforgivably gorgeous photo of one of the all-time greats.

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Karen Mulder, 1997

I've always thought this photo of Karen was lovely.

Photo: André Rau

It makes me stop and stare every time I come across it.

It’s a very Grace Kelly look, which makes sense because the shoot was in Monaco. SI has done other “retro” themes, like Laetitia Casta’s “history of swimwear” shoot in 2000 and Heidi Klum’s “Varga girl” bodypainting in 2006.

Karen's pic feels a little different. Her swimsuit isn't particularly retro, but all the other visual elements are: the hair, the makeup, the coy pose, the peaches-and-cream smirk. Her spread in this issue told kind of a celebrity story, in which she’s strolling through her rarefied lifestyle, surrounded by reporters and pampered dogs and helicopters.

I know nothing about photography, but I think it has a different look from most swimsuit shoots. They used fashion photographer André Rau, and I believe this is his only shoot for SI, so they were going for a specific sheen.


Karen has a darker and more bizarre connection to Grace Kelly and Monaco, which I won’t get into, but suffice it to say Karen has had some darkness in her life. It’s hard to reconcile that darkness with such a pretty, charming, well-coifed image.

I’m reminded of this shot from Walter Iooss’s “Heaven” book. 

It’s Petra Nemcova, shot in Vietnam for the 2003 issue. Iooss has this to say about the photo:

“This is a picture I never really looked at until Petra nearly drowned in the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster almost two years after we visited Vietnam. It’s not a happy or sexy image by any means but there is something telling to it considering what later happened to her. Her history makes this picture a little more interesting.”

I disagree on one point — I think this is a very sexy image. But it’s also somber, imbued by tragedy with more weight.

I think it’s useful to be reminded that a lot of turmoil can exist beneath the most serene photo. We’re looking at a very controlled, final image.

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Heidi Klum, 1998

Wow, the sheer Heidi Klumness of this photo.

Photo: Robert Erdmann

I can wax poetic about a lot of the shots I’m sharing lately, but this one is just plain old in-your-face hotness. Nothing subtle about it.

The translucent top, the hint of underboob, the bikini bottom slipped aside to reveal the tanlines from another bikini bottom. It’s the same over-the-top mood as her Halloween costumes.

Heidi has a lot of sweet, wholesome shots in her tenure with SI, but this isn’t one of them. She’s presenting everything she has and boldly meeting your gaze as she does it.

Here’s a slightly different pose from somewhere …

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Paulina Porizkova, 1986

This photo is a landmark in my early fascination with the female body.

Photo: Brian Lanker

I was in thrall to that classic Buddha-style bathing-beauty pose. I memorized the placement of each tiny, round, plastic sequin on that bikini.

There’s a fun contradiction in this photo. Paulina is on a Polynesian island, wearing a sparkly and brightly colored swimsuit, lounging on a canoe, with a flower in her hair. You’d expect the girl in this situation to be the type of bubbly blonde you’d find on a postcard or a Hawaiian shirt.

But instead, there’s Paulina, of the Eastern European strain of swimsuit models, with her pensive and almost gloomy expression. Even when Paulina smiled, it was subtle and mysterious instead of sunny and inviting.

More recently, she’s all big, toothy smiles …

… but back then, she added a layer of depth and darkness to what I found appealing in those early years, laying the groundwork for my tastes to this day.

This is a better quality scan, but it has the page split.

SI: The world is ending. Go ahead and open up your vault to all your high-quality photos. You’re sitting on so much potential joy.

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Kathy Ireland, 1985

I’m beginning to think I’ve been wrong about Kathy Ireland.

Photo: Brian Lanker

I’ve spent a lot of time feeling like she was overrated. Gorgeous, obviously, but in an era that included Elle and Paulina, I didn’t see why Kathy was the one who got marriage proposals from entire fraternities in the Letters section of Sports Illustrated.

I don’t know if it’s maturity or nostalgia or what, but I’m coming around. She had some magnificent photos in her long career with the magazine.


This was the honest-to-goodness centerfold of my first-ever swimsuit issue. In my youth, that word, centerfold, was bandied about as some kind of sacred term, something to do with naked ladies but I wasn’t sure what.

But then this magazine arrived at my house, thanks to my dad’s subscription, and I finally understood it. One horizontal photo, two uninterrupted pages. With some careful staple-manipulation, she could be removed in a single sheet and affixed to your bedroom wall with nothing but a few tiny holes marring her.

The caption compares her to the Sphinx, and it fits. Not just the pose itself, with her forearms resting on the sand below, but also the inscrutable and hypnotic eyes meeting your gaze.

One notable difference from the Sphinx: Kathy tilts her pelvis up a little to reveal a glorious corduroy string bikini bottom, a gesture that would have made my eleven-year-old head swim.

This photo is the best version of this pic floating around online. It’s not scanned from the magazine, but from one of the “collections” SI has put out, so she doesn’t have the crease through her right shoulder.

It’s worth noting that a variant of this shot appeared in the subsequent 1986 calendar, and it’s just as wonderful.

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Stephanie Seymour, 1989

Thongs are pretty amazing.

Photo: Marc Hispard

G-strings, too. They are basically an admission that we, as a society, have decided that naked butts are a-okay.

This over-the-counter girlie magazine, with the word “swimsuit” in the title, finds innovative ways to tease at — but conceal — the other forbidden areas of the body. Angles of poses, backlighting, fabric (even if it’s occasionally translucent).

But what, really, is the difference between an ass in a thong and an ass out of a thong?

One thing I’ll say about Stephanie: She has a lot of great shots. Possibly the highest batting average of any model who never got a cover. She’s just incredible. I finally chose to feature this lovely photograph.

This bikini was not in the 1989 25th Anniversary issue of the magazine. We had to wait until the 1990 desk calendar — the first one SI ever put out — to find this photo waiting for us during the week of August 26. (As it happens, Stephanie was on the cover of that desk calendar.)

And thank goodness for those calendars. In the days before each model got dozens of online photos, there were pics like this that would have disappeared if not for the 52-week bonus collection SI put out later each year.


Stephanie’s front is gently sun-kissed in this shot. But her back — where we are — is in shadow. She turns and looks at us over her shoulder, but this isn’t quite a Grable pose because she’s not smiling. She’s also not glowering. It’s a nearly expressionless glance that we’re allowed to put our own meaning to.

For me, it’s that that “permission” dynamic I find so joyful — “I know you’re looking, and I don’t blame you. Knock yourself out. I’ll just go back to gazing out at the ocean now.”


I read an article once in some men’s magazine, probably at the end of 1999. The topic was something like “The 50 Greatest Inventions of the Twentieth Century.” One of them was panties.

An observation from that article was that a woman wearing only panties is somehow more naked than she is when she’s actually naked.

The thong, I think, has that effect. It covers nothing, but its presence enhances nevertheless. It’s a frame, it’s an arrow, it’s the optical illusion of two profiles forming a vase. Its presence emphasizes its absence.

And that’s the difference between an ass in a thong and an ass out of a thong.

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Coco Mitchell, 1986

Every time I see an SI pic of a model with a rainbow, I think “Hey, I should do a rainbow-themed post!” Unfortunately, I promptly forget to keep track of the photo. So while I know there are a lot of swimsuit-girl-and-rainbow photos out there, I don’t have a running list.

But Coco here deserves a mention on her own merits.

I wish there was a sharp online photo of this shot. I put this together in Photoshop from the scans at the SI Archive.

Photo: Brian Lanker

This is a much better file, but it has that pesky Getty watermark.

In any case, Coco, who has never been featured on this blog before, stands to her mid-thighs in a river in front of a scene that would be breathtaking even without the beautiful, swimsuit-clad woman in the foreground.

The last photo I shared featured a warm Kate Upton, specifically positioned to contrast with her icy surroundings. This two-page spread, on the other hand, lets the model and her backdrop enhance each other. Coco’s Mondrian-esque monokini mirrors the glorious rainbow on the opposite page.

This was from only the second swimsuit issue I ever got my hands on, and it hit my sweet spot. Coco’s solid curves and high-cut suit and one-thigh-crossed-in-front-of-the-other pose met my teenaged eyes just right.

Weirdly, the photo also inspires some residual sadness in me. It was the last picture in the swimsuit spread that year, and — as foreign a concept as this is today — I used to flip through the pages in order. This pic of Coco meant that the next page would not show me fabulous babes, but rather this guy:

This was way back in the day when the swimsuit issue arrived enveloped within a regular issue of Sports Illustrated, meaning that actual sports stories took up valuable space in my girlie magazine. The story immediately following the swimsuit section was usually about some athletic event in the country where the shoot took place that year, and 1986 introduced us to the “Tiurai” festival in Tahiti, with its spirited rock-lifting competitions.

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Kate Upton, 2013

I think Antarctica is the best shoot Kate gave us.

Photo: Derek Kettela

The hair, the pose, the gaze, the cushions — this photo is pure, glorious cheesecake.

Against a backdrop of icy blue and white and black, Kate is a splash of warmth, an inviting contrast to the foreboding landscape. She inspires thoughts of intimacy — why are you and Kate on this boat at the bottom of the world?

The wispy fur bikini is a nice touch. It’s a parody of warm clothing. It’s in line with the fun visual irony of pinups, like a girl at a construction site wearing jeans shorts and a bikini top — and a safety helmet. Or a lady in a kitchen wearing nothing but an apron. The “fur” is environment-appropriate, but only a prop that emphasizes how little she’s actually wearing.

For me, Kate’s 2013 appearance earned her a place in the Pantheon of Sports Illustrated swimsuit models.

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Elle Macpherson, 1988

The phrase “golden triangle” refers to a range of things. Several geographical locations, a couple cultural phenomena, some sort of math thing.

Despite its range of meanings, it doesn’t come up in everyday conversation very often. But whenever I hear it, I think of this Elle Macpherson photo.

Photo: Marc Hispard

That triangle has entranced me for decades. This might be the most gorgeous photo in a 1988 issue that was above average in gorgeousness.

This behind-the-scenes shot is enlightening.

It reveals how expertly the artifice is assembled to create a great swimsuit pic. Elle isn’t a sex goddess deep in some lush jungle, glistening with perspiration and rain, miles from civilization. She’s a girl in her mid-20s, getting splashed with a bit of water, in a clearing next to some kind of picnic venue.

But when the time comes, the hair descends and the hips tilt and the eyes glower. The shot snaps into place.

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Rebecca Romijn, 1996

This is, obviously, not the skimpiest swimsuit Rebecca has worn in SI.

Photo: Marco Glaviano

In fact, I’m not even sure it’s a swimsuit. It covers the vast majority of her body. Long sleeves, long legs. If not for the cleavage-window, this would almost look like a Halima Aden burkini.

And I’d argue that her face, not her body, is the focal point.

But what a face. Such an intense, symmetrical face. It’s no wonder she was cast to play a villainess in a comic book movie. Even with her disheveled, damp hair, she’s intensely perfect.

The suit is blue, and the shimmering sand that surrounds her is blue, which has the effect of popping those gorgeous irises like a couple of laser beams.

It’s a photo that inspires me to stop and appreciate, and I think that’s what I’m trying to highlight with these posts.

Two-Pièce de Résistance: Cheryl Tiegs, 1983

I’ve mentioned that the huge number of photos (40+) we get of each model nowadays is a double-edged sword. It’s great to have the quantity, but it’s harder to find that one iconic shot that comes from having to select one picture of one girl in one swimsuit.

I thought I’d pay homage to some of my favorite shots, those I’d consider “classics.” Most, if not all, have been featured on the blog before, but I’ve been feeling nostalgic, and I have an urge to shake my head free of the Larger Questions that have started attaching themselves to this simple girlie mag.

They won’t all be bikinis, but the title “Two-Pièce de Résistance” was just too irresistible.

• • •

I’ve always been partial to this photo of Cheryl.

Photo: Walter Iooss Jr.

 

I think part of the reason is its timelessness. Cheryl is beautiful, but because of certain signifiers — hair, swimsuit style, photography — she usually seems rooted in the 70s. Since that was before my puberty, I have to admit that my love for her photos sometimes feels like an appreciation for museum pieces.

But this shot is gorgeous in any decade.

Those big, smoky eyes; that Mona Lisa smirk; that clingy wet one-piece. For my money, it's a sexier shot than her landmark fishnet photo.

But let us pay respect to the fishnet, nevertheless.

Yes, THAT Hemingway

You may have noticed a couple of shots from the 2019 issue where Anne de Paula and Robin Holzken are posing on trucks labeled “Hemingways.”

This is part of the Hemingways Collection, a trio of luxury, amenity-filled resorts. SI made ample use of their safari experience for 2019’s Kenya shoot.

The name of the resorts is inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s fondness for Kenya, but something tells me Ernest probably roughed it more than this Simba Tent with enormous double bedrooms and on-site butler.

In any case, this truck is not the first Hemingway to appear in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. This is Margaux (née Margot) Hemingway. She was Ernest’s granddaughter.

She’s another Cindy/Amber/Sarah girl: one-hit wonder, and only one photo from that year.

Here she is as she was revealed to readers in 1975, nestled between already-established SI swimsuit royalty Cheryl Tiegs on the left, and rookie superstar-in-the-making Christie Brinkley on the right.

Her story has a sad end. She was mired in addiction, a faltering career, and depression, and she committed suicide in 1996.
 

I have occasionally wondered if she’s the only SI swimsuit model who is no longer living. She might be. I haven’t done any deep research into it, because it would be time-consuming and morbid. But it’s a magazine with over half a century’s worth of models. Margaux just might be the first casualty.