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.
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| 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.
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