The other day at work the leotard came up during some office bants (bants: may be the subject of a future blog).
It feels a bit 80s now, nobody wears shiny leotards with leg warmers when they work out any more (or do they?).
It struck me what a strange word it is. Not very descriptive, like bodysuit or all-in-one. So where did it come from? Was the leotard invented by Mr Leo Tard? (Thanks Jon for that contribution).
As it turned out Jon wasn’t that far off. The garment was first made famous by a French acrobatic performer called Jules Léotard. It was a one-piece, skin-tight, knitted affair.
But the first known use of the word leotard to describe the garment wasn’t until 1886, after he died.
Léotard developed the art of trapeze, and is the inspiration for the song, The daring young man on the flying trapeze.
Another related word, bikini, also has french origins. It was introduced by french clothing designer Louis Rénard in 1946. He named it after the atoll Bikini, where the US tested nuclear weapons in 1946 – he hoped the skimpy bikini would cause as much of an explosive reaction as a nuclear bomb (!)
Sources
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leotard
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini
That Word... where's it come from? 