Posts Tagged ‘designer swimwear’

Hau’oli la hanau is Hawaiian for Happy Birthday.

In the islands the big day is call for a luau, or a potluck buffet, where the whole ohana and extended friends and family hele over for the Kailua pork and trimmings.

Leis are bestowed, pressies made and given. Meles are sung. And everyone makes and takes plate, or the left-overs, with them.

Today is Kikidoll’s friend CC’s birthday.  Let’s celebrate. Pass the Mai Tais!  It’s gonna be a rockin’ night.

Last week, on neighbor island Maui, Letarte Swimwear celebrated its 10 year birthday with stylish liliko’i Cosmos and pupu. Congratulations to another local swimwear company with such a strong showing in Sports Illustrated Swim.

Next week another milestone, another birthday for gorgeous beach girl Kalena.  Let’s go party, girls, in our designer swimwear bikinis!

Me encanta Surfing Magazine‘s latest preview video of girls acting cute and stuff in the edgiest, rocking-est swimwear for 2010.

Newcomers Mikoh Swimwear and Kikidoll are in good company with more established bikini lines like L*Space, B Swim and Insight.

With its saucy paso doble music background by Joe Arroyo, clips of Spanish fort ruins in Old San Juan, and luscious lovelies sipping Cuba Libres, the national drink of Puerto Rico, we can overlook the intermittent rain in the shoot. After all, swimwear is meant to get wet, claro?

Look for this special issue on stands 2 March.

Kikidoll spied with her little eye Elin Nordegren Woods (or her twin?) in a bikini this week.

The urban myth and every new mother’s nightmare that all Swedish au pairs are gorgeous but deadly blonde bombshells is not put to bed by these achingly lovely identical twin sisters Elin and Josefin.

Born to a politician mother and a radio journalist father the Nordegren girls arrived on New Year’s Day 1980. With an older brother Axel, they spent an idyllic childhood in Waxholm a coastal village near Stockholm, though the parents had separated, with the father Thomas relocating to Washington DC.

As young teenagers the flaxen-haired twins dabbled in modelling but largely to earn additionl funds to pay for their educations.  Josefin eventually went on to qualify as a lawyer while Elin studied child psychology.

Their modelling though short-lived proved to leave a stunning catalogue behind.

Elin particularly looked fetching in swimwear and posed in several memorable shots wearing a white bikini, an school bus yellow one and another one in a green jungle print.  Elin could have squared off against those Angels at Victoria’s Secret and the other super-uber-babes at Sports Illustrated Swim if she’d stayed the course.

 

Instead, she and Josefin hit the fairway and went to work as childminders for Swedish pro-golfer Jesper Parnevik where Elin ultimately met and later married the most famous pro golfer in the world, Tiger Woods.

Ever lovely, Elin is more likely than not to be found today playing with her two adorable children Sam and Charlie than in a bikini.

More gorgeous bikinis

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Kikidoll spied with her little eye Elizabeth Hurley this week at the launch of her new swimwear line for affordable well-designed Spanish fashion house MANGO.

Now married and retired from acting, Hurley has somehow defied the gods and kept as trim as the sails she is rigging in her photos of the new line.  She revealed just how she managed to keep fit, saying she relied on ‘nice photographers and a little digital enhancement. I like a certain amount of retouching like anybody’, she admitted.

Airbrushing or not, the released photos of her modelling her new line show an amazing figure for a 44-year old mother of a six-year old son.

‘Miss Kensington’ appeared demurely in a hot pink dress along side 2 bikini-clad models at the premiere. The next day, in Madrid, she continued the shy-girl approach and wore another dress instead of donning her own creations.  She was heard to have said she dreaded swimwear photo shoots like anyone, and still had two more to go, up ahead. Dread.

Known for her ‘belle poitrine’, Ms. Hurley first caught the world’s attention in 1994 at the film opening, pinned together by giant gold safety pins in a Versace curve-loving black gown, her ample bosom on display, as she was ushered in by then tight squeeze Hugh Grant in his global box office smash Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Estee Lauder grabbed her, and by 1995, plucked, plumped and honed, she became their newest ‘face’ up until 2001. While at Lauder, ‘Pleasures’, ‘Intuition’ ‘Beautiful’, ‘Dazzling’ and ‘Sensuous’ among others were created and launched as she fronted those campaigns.  She later said of her modelling days, “I was far from an ingénue, having had my first modeling job at 29.” Today, Elizabeth continues her 14th year on a non-exclusive basis under contract with Lauder.
 
Films followed her modelling, such as two Austin Powers ones in 1997 and 1999, but she segued into fashion, launching her own swimline by 2005. Last year she presented the first capsule collection of 12 pieces for MANGO.

This year, there are shades of hottest fuschia, soft peach, popping ‘mango’, cherry red, brown and deep plum, in bikinis, two pieces, one pieces and tunic cover-ups that are mid-priced while still trendy, such as the white cutout swimsuit $50, gold cuff $22, textured cuff $50, fuchsia, tangerine, brown, cherry bikini $70 each, kaftan $140, bag $44, plum bikini $40.

See more ladies’ bikinis

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No one personifies the All- American surfer girl in a swim suit more than uber-model Christie Brinkley. Here she is catching rays in a red-white and blue flag inspired one piece.

The 1981 cover of Sports Illustrated Swim edition showed off her sculpted physique and natural glamor in a pinky lavendar bikini that captured the feathery look of the pelicans and seabirds behind her on Captiva Island.

Her 1000 kilo-watt smile, perfect features, tawny golden locks and athletic,womanly form made her the choice for three consecutive covers for Sports Illustrated‘s famed Swim Issues from 1979-1981, the first time anyone appeared three times in a row.

For more than thirty years, Christie has graced over 500 covers of the world’s leading fashion magazines and held the longest contract for modelling as the face of Cover Girl cosmetics nearly as long, for 20 years, signing back in 2005 to represent the maturing market.

Though born in Michigan, she was raised in the Pacific Palisades/Brentwood area of Los Angeles, California, and after attending the French Lycee there, left to study art in Paris in 1973. Discovered in a Parisian post office by a photographer who introduced her to the legendary Elite Modelling agency, her modelling career zoomed to stratospheric proportions at Ford making her one if not the most recognized faces in the world.

Of her new-found status, Christie quipped later: “I was basically a surfer girl from California. I never looked like a model.”

Christie has also appeared in films as ‘the girl in the red Corvette’ in National Lampoon‘s Vacation and reprised her role in a sequel Vegas Vacation. Hosting television shows, writing books, promoting products such as jewellery, perfume and home gym equipment in infomercials, selling patterns, and campaigning for animal rights has kept this vegetarian mother of 3 toned and active and engaged in her still-vibrant career.

But modelling is still what keeps her at the top of the lists when she was voted the number 3 rank in AskMen.com’s  Top 10 Supermodels of all Time, and on Playboy‘s list of 100 sexiest women of the 20th Century.

Perhaps the most enduring testament to her golden girl looks came in 2005 when she was featured in the special Sports Illustrated 40th Anniversary Issue’s Hall of Fame, celebrating the most revered figures in the magazine’s history.

Christie’s posters, covers and calendars are still beaming her sunny beauty to all her many admirers.

More designer swimwear

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