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.

Ten-Hit Wonders

These are, in my humble opinion, the ten best one-hit wonders to grace the swimsuit issue in this blog’s ten-year history.

#10 Georgia Gibbs (2018)

First appearance: February 28, 2018, Models Named in Suit

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#9 Lauren Mellor (2014)

First appearance: December 6, 2013, Copycats

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#8 Kenza Fourati (2011)

First appearance: February 12, 2011, Your 2011 Rookies

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#7 Michelle Vawer (2012)

First appearance: November 16, 2011, One-Piece Wednesday: 2012 Mystery Ladies

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#6 Bregje Heinen (2014)

(This swimsuit alone would have gotten her on this list.)

First appearance: June 4 2013, So It Begins

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#5 Sofia Resing (2016)

First appearance: February 17, 2016, Headless Body in Topless Photo

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#4 Cris Urena (2014)

First appearance: December 6, 2013, Copycats

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#3 Chase Carter (2018)

First appearance: January 28, 2018, Turning Back the Pages

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#2 Kelly Gale (2017)

First appearance: February 7, 2017, Christie’s Back

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#1 Raven Lyn (2018)

First appearance: October 19, 2017, Back to Basics

Interesting trivia: The one-hit wonders of the last decade had a Lyn (Raven, 2018) and a Lynn (Tara, 2019) as well as a Ren (Alexis, 2018) and a Renn (Crystal, 2012).

Not Quite Finnish

Hailey Clauson and Bo Krsmanovic were such an iconic duo in 2017, huddled together against the icy Finnish landscape…

… that a year later Beach Bunny swimwear reunited them (in a warmer climate) to model some of their highly deserving swimsuit designs.

The shoot is listed as “Festival 2018,” but I have no idea if that’s a line of swimwear, or some kind of event, or what.

Hailey models the "Tango Bottom."

Bo's is listed as the “Skimpy Bottom” for some reason.

Their SI shoot was one of a handful of multi-girl shoots we’ve been treated to in recent years. I’m glad this chocolate-and-peanut-butter pairing was explored at least one more time.

A couple years ago, the SI Swimsuit app disappeared. I miss it. It often had more (and larger) photos than what you could find on the site. And occasionally you’d find a weird little mistake left over from an editing tweak, like the way they tilted and clone-stamped this Sam Hoopes pic to create what they thought was a better angle.

Bregje got a similar treatment.

The app is how I found this interesting pair of Hailey/Bo Finland photos.

You may notice that Hailey and Bo, as well as every square inch of the background, are identical in both pics. The only difference is the “reindeer staging,” as they call it in the swimsuit modeling industry.

They manipulated the pic to move the deer. The original photo is the one with the deer that’s (1) farther away from the sled and (2) turned away from the camera. They wanted a more photogenic placement. Here’s a translucent overlay of the two pics.

Even the reindeer’s body is the same. They got a head from a different reindeer photo and affixed it to this one.

Why can’t SI let reindeer embrace their bodies as they are without unrealistic, photoshopped expectations?

Hit the Hammock Button

Well well well, Swim Daily.

Wherever did you get the idea for featuring SI models in hammocks?

Not here, that's for sure.

Anyway, if I am to compete, I must go deeper in my cuts, like Annie Morton here, one-hit wonder from 2002.

...And here's a more recent one that neither Swim Daily nor I had snapped up yet: Bregje Heinen from 2014.

Calendar Girls, Revisited: 1993

So, it's looking more and more like the swimsuit issue will be later than normal this year. Normally we'd be a month out at this point, and there'd have been plenty of communications about it. But other than a bit of activity last year, there's been a whole lot of silence.

As long as this February won't bring us any new photos, we might as well look at a February past. A couple of under-the-radar models graced us on 2/19/93: Shana Zadrick was the calendar girl and Tanya Mityushina was born.

A couple weeks later, we got Bregje Heinen and Judit Masco on March 5.

After couple more weeks, we had a collaboration between two cover girls: Kathy Ireland welcomed Danielle Herrington on the 26th.

And on October 8, Ashley Richardson introduced us to Barbara Palvin, for which we should be quite grateful.

I can't leave without mentioning Adaora. I believe she was born in 1993, but I can't for the life of me find the actual date. So here she is, in all her loveliness.

Happy Birthdays, Niki, Julie, Bregje

It’s the rare swimsuit birthday trifecta. March 5 brought us three lovely models, one in 1975:

…one in 1986:

…and one in 1993:

Thanks, March 5!

That’s the Way the Rookie Crumbles 2015

With a whopping twelve rookies introduced in 2014, someone had to slip away in 2015. I am actually surprised at how many did stick around. Seven: more than half of them.

We lost the entire Netherlands subcommittee: Bregje, Marloes, and Valerie. I expected at least one of them to stick around. Marloes was the swimsuit-model-lookingest girl of the bunch. And Bregje had those eyes. (And that one-piece.)

The most surprising return for me was Samantha Hoopes. Sexy, obviously. But she seemed like a very straightforward blonde-with-big-boobs, if that makes sense. (Though I suppose “blonde with big boobs” never hurt anyone’s chances in the swimsuit issue.)

Samantha has a pretty 2015, by the way.

I also thought Emily Ratajkowski was going to completely distance herself from SI, but she’s back.

I’m sad to lose Cris, but I believe she had a baby. And Lauren had loads of potential, in my opinion.

In any case, we now have seven rookies to watch. My predictions, from most likely to least likely to return:

1) Kelly (would probably be #2 if she hadn’t just gotten ROTY)
2) Hailey
3) Rose
4) Erin
5) Robyn
6) Solveig
7) Ashley

We’ll find out in a year!

Rookies crumbling 2013, 2012, 2011.

Happy Birthday, Heidi and Swimsuitologist

Happy 41st, Heidi.

And happy 4th, Swimsuitologist.

Four years. That's a Presidential office term.

That's the time between one Summer Olympics and the following Summer Olympics.

When the first post went up on June 1, 2010: Emily DiDonato, Chanel Iman, and Samantha Hoopes were all 19 years old.

Valerie van der Graaf, Emily Ratajkowski, Cris Urena, and Sara Sampaio were 18.

Kate Upton and Bregje Heinen were 17.

And Gigi Hadid?

Gigi Hadid had just turned 15.