Our top Etsy handmade and exclusive vintage picks for that Temptress of St. Tropez look.

Brigitte Bardot is most often remembered as the iconic blond bombshell of the 1960s silver screen. The starring role in films like …And God Created Woman and The Girl in the Bikini turned her into the siren that wooed men and captivated women around the world. Her sense of style effortlessly mixed cool chic with the sex appeal that can only come with unassuming confidence and bewildering nonchalance. Little do most people know that the French actress left her sex icon status in 1973 in order to fight for animal rights, which has continued to be her passion to this day at the age of 78.As part of our Etsy vintage fashion flashback series we’ve rounded up our favorite Bardot looks from the online marketplace so that you can get that “animal rights activist under the guise of a sex kitten” look.

• Start off simple with a Brigitte Bardot style headband from Mixbaby for a tres chic do that works with the hair up or down. Made from a rayon jersey and available in several different, super cute patterns, this comfy and easy-to-wear headband can be paired with black stretch leggings, a figure hugging mini dress and ballet flats for that Bardot babe look.

• We’re loving this Bardot tied crop top from Suite, especially for the last weeks of sweltering summer weather. Made out of 100% cotton for excellent breathability, this summery top works well with a pair of ankle length trousers and tossed locks. Choose from a red and white gingham print or a crisp, all white cotton fabric.

• Gorgeously tailored, this waist-high pencil skirt from ATELIERBERLIN is as sophisticated as it is sexy. Pair it with a blouse for the office or a crop top for less formal occasions, or take a cue from the pic below and don it with a casual boatneck top with scrunched sleeves.

• When going for a fancier look, this strapless Brigitte Bardot style wiggle dress from madelinzero is sure to turn heads. Made from natural materials and tailored to accentuate a feminine waist, this will be a hit at your next cocktail party. Pair with kitten heels and a pink pout.

• This leopard print fur coat, also from madelinzero (above), is the most Bardot-esque cover up we can think of. Lined in luxurious satin and (of course) made from fake fur, this timeless and chic coat can glam up even the demurest of outfits. Add a diamante brooch or two and sport some sexy gloves to really play the part.

• This vintage fashion pick (alongside the amazing handmade pieces above) is an original Brigitte Bardot 1960s bustier from petuniaMacsCloset. Designed by the former actress herself, this very rare, vintage long-line bra is a real find – snag it before someone else does!

Bardot images: judacoregio, garann

Related on EcoSalon:

Women on Film: Brigitte Bardot as A Rebel

High Definition: Beach Bombshell

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“It was an itsy bitsy, teenie weenie, yellow polka dot bikini”: Once so shocking, the song’s 1960s protagonist was “afraid to come out of the water.”

In 1946 in Paris, a fashion designer named Louis Reald unveiled his two-piece bathing suit to the public. He named it the “bikini” because he believed the sight of women wearing such skimpy attire would cause men the same sort of devastation that the Bikini Atoll had suffered four days earlier when an atomic bomb was detonated on it. These days it’s women who wake up with a bang each summer at the sound of the word, “Bikini.” Modern day hyphenates like bikini-body, bikini-bootcamp and most definitely, bikini-wax certainly add to the impact.

Micheline Bernardini photographed wearing the first bikini. Designed by Louis Reald to be “smaller than the world’s smallest bathing suit,” it was designed to fit in the matchbox Bernardini is holding.

Conceived to be small enough to fit into a matchbox, the new navel revealing design was considered so scandalous that none of the Parisian models would dare to wear his design. Reard could only find nude dancer Micheline Bernardini to model his design for the press.

In the early 1940s pin-ups like Rita Hayworth wore two-pieces but covered their navels.

Midriff baring swimsuits had preceded the bikini with far less sensation. By the early 1940s film stars like Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner and Ava Gardner were all photographed wearing two-piece swimsuits consisting of a structured halter-top and bottom, but it was the revelation of the female bellybutton that was truly controversial.

Favored by Queen Victoria, bathing huts in 1900 protected female bathers’ modesty.

When you consider that only 50 years earlier, women wanting to take a dip at the beach were reliant on a contraption called a bathing machine, it may put the hoopla of 1946 in some perspective. In existence as early as 1750, bathing huts – small wooden huts on wheels inside which women changed inside and were then wheeled into the water to descend a small ladder in the back – prevented women from the immodesty of running across the open sand in her bathing suit.

Brigitte Bardot photographed on the French Riviera helped to encourage the trend for bikinis in the 1950s. 

The bikini grew in popularity in France throughout the 1950s, helped along by Brigitte Bardot’s steamy roles in 1952 with The Girl in the Bikini and in 1956 with And God Created Woman. The rest of the world remained immune to its charms, bikinis were banned in Belgium, Italy, Spain and Australia and from worldwide beauty pageants after the first Miss World Contest in London in 1951, and it was even declared sinful by the Vatican.

It remained off limits in the States until wholesome girl-next-door Annette Funicello in 1960s beach party movies like Bikini Beach and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini helped make the bikini more popular to the masses. The first Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition in 1964 sealed the deal with Babette March in a white bikini.

Actress Ursula Andress, playing Honey Rider in the James Bond film Dr. No, memorably strode out of tropical Caribbean waters wearing a homemade bikini shocking American theater goers in 1962.

 The 1980s saw the introduction of the string bikini as seen on Phoebe Cates in Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Want to catch up on some more fashion history?

Now & Then: The History of the White Wedding Dress

Now & Then: The History of Shapewear

Now & Then: The History of the Ballet Flat

Now & Then: The History of the Breton Shirt

Now & Then: The History of the Pencil Skirt

Now & Then: The History of Skinny Jeans

Read more Now & Then articles here.

The post Now & Then: The History of the Bikini appeared first on EcoSalon.

The modern screen heroine can learn from Brigitte Bardot’s unapologetic sexual power.

In 1956, “My Fair Lady” opened on Broadway with Julie Andrews as Eliza Doolittle. Fidel Castro began to inflame an uprising in Cuba. And the U.S. Supreme Court declared Alabama’s bus segregation laws illegal. America may have been in the thick of Eisenhower’s puritanical 1950s, but the shades of a social revolution were starting to stir.

In the midst of it all, Brigitte Bardot exploded onto American movie theater screens. Her 1956 film “…And God Created Woman” made the 22-year-old actress an international star, catapulting both the French ingénue and the foreign film market straight into the American consciousness. Bardot became the symbol of a new kind of sexuality, embracing both frankness and spontaneity with an abandon never before seen on American film screens. Consequently, her defiant disdain of convention both shocked and inspired a generation of women and men.

As Juliette Hardy, Bardot became much more than a stereotypical sexpot. The first time we meet her, she’s sunbathing naked in the St. Tropez sun as the camera plays on her naked form. But her sex is the source of her power. Sex is not a weapon she’s using to get what she wants – it is her end goal.

Mix Bardot’s “unbridled appetite for pleasure” into 1950s American culture and you have the beginning of a feminist revolution. She was the first of her kind, a new kind of sexually-liberated heroine. Bardot was a threat to the status quo. Her Juliette was confused, abandoned, and at times childlike, but conversely one of the most powerful female characters of her time.

But did Bardot’s example survive in cinema? She was scandalous to the 1950s American public. Today, she’s just as rare. After all, who would be her modern equivalent? There is Angelina Jolie, whose screen presence often seems to hold sexuality like a sidearm. But compare Bardot’s Juliette to most characters played by a Julia Roberts, or Katherine Heigl, or Kate Hudson. It’s like putting a panther next to a litter of kittens. The so-called modern screen heroine pines for marriage and Mr. Right in a typical modern romantic comedy. Ironically, it’s the 1950s that’s considered a quaint and conventional period in American history.

So perhaps it’s time for the modern screen heroine to take a page from the Bardot’s handbook. We’re not prudes, sluts, or whores: we’re women empowered to unapologetically get what we want. So let’s reclaim the modern woman from an image as a marriage-obsessed desperado. Even if it means dancing a mambo, stepping on a man’s face, or being called a “demon-driven temptress.”

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QuotesDaily quotes at EcoSalon.

“I know what sin is.”

-Brigitte Bardot

Image: Muo_hace dc

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ColumnWant to have an iconic summer look beachside? Follow these tips.

Sun-bleached blondes with beach tousled hair, smoldering black eyes and pouty nude lips captured a time in the ’60s when curvy women in bikinis lit up movie screens. Over the decades, Brigitte Bardot and Claudia Schiffer have been inspirational icons for this playfully seductive summer look – one that will never go out of style.
GUESS’s Spring 2011 campaign reignited the part of me that would love to go wild with a box of peroxide, a teasing comb and a kohl pencil. Like most things that inspire me, this is a pretty unrealistic look for anyone who wants to do more than sing songs with choreographed dance moves on the beach. The reality is that much black eyeliner would protect from sun glare, but would be a nightmare as soon as one drop of salty water hit.  If you plan to stay dry and want to have some fun with your makeup recreating yourself as a ’60s beach bombshell, here’s the how-to.

Black out

To start you’ll need a black eye pencil, black liquid eyeliner, black eyeshadow, a tube of black mascara, and an eye contour brush.

Green product suggestions:

Living Nature Eye Pencil in Midnight

Lavera Liquid Eyeliner (vegan)

Alima Pure Satin Matte Eyeliner (to be used as eyeshadow) in Black (vegan)

Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics Brush #004 (vegan)

Pro tip: Put foundation on after eyeshadow so you can easily clean off any powder that may have dropped onto your face.

1. Line the upper and lower lashes of your eye with the black eye pencil. This doesn’t need to be precise but it does need to be thick and dense.  You may have to go over it a couple of times to get the right intensity.

2. Take your eye contour brush and begin buffing the edges of the lines to diffuse them up into the crease for the upper lid.  For the lower lid, pull the liner with the brush down to about the place where the ends of your lower lashes touch. On most people that’s about ¼ of an inch.

Pro tip: Do not connect the inner corners of the eyes with black and leave the water line free of liner to give a more wide-eyed effect.

3. Use the brush and go more heavily into the crease of the upper lid with black eyeshadow using a windshield wiper motion using very rounded strokes. Leave a fair amount of space between the shadow and the brow bone. Everyone’s eyes are different, so for some it maybe 1/8 of an inch and for others almost 1/2. Concentrate the color on the outer edges of the eyes. Make sure that the edges aren’t pointy, rather soft and arching. Follow with just a touch of shadow underneath the eye following the rounded curve. Keep the application a bit lighter here.

4. Curl your lashes.  A lot.

5. Whip out that black liquid liner and make a thick line across the top lashes. Then paint on a thick, but slightly thinner line underneath.  If you are feeling very deft, make the lines a little bit thicker towards the outer corners of the eye as you go.  Remember not to connect the inner corners with liner because it will shut down the eye and make it look more punk rather than 60’s.

Pro tip: If you mess up your liner use a pointy cotton squab dampened with a touch of water to quickly “erase” your mistake.

6. Layer on the mascara. This look has nothing to do with restraint. If you need to use half a tube on both upper and lower lashes then do it! Clumpy and pointy work here.

A bold brow

Is anyone getting tired of hearing me say that bold brows are the way to go for pretty much every look? This look really needs it and it’s what is most modern. Naturally groomed and less manicured brows add a great frame to the eye and structure to the face. Need a quick tutorial on that, check out this video.

Don’t touch those freckles!

If you are blessed to have a freckly face or even a freckle-less face, don’t cover it with a pile of foundation.  Let your skin show through and only conceal the tiniest bits where necessary.  The key to this look is really keeping things raw, rough and textured.  Use a tinted moisturizer with SPF to help even skin tone, protect and allow the skin texture to still be seen.  Try Josie Maran Tinted Moisturizer SPF 30.

Light lips

To balance such a heavy eye, a very nude lip is the way to go.  There’s nothing overly skilled about this part.  Just slap on some lip color and you are set! Ecco Bella makes a great natural, vegan lip color called Almond that should do the trick.

Alright beach babes, get out their and show ‘em how glamorous your summer style can be!

Editor’s note: Got a celebrity look you’d like to copy or a trend you’d like to see incorporating healthy, non-toxic makeup? Send your questions to High Definition columnist Kristen Arnett at beauty@ecosalon.com

New York City based Kristen Arnett is an internationally renowned makeup artist and founder of the Green Beauty Team, styling high profile celebrities and runway models as well as a sought after beauty expert, educator and teacher for other makeup artists.

Image: Ellen Von Unwerth for GUESS Inc.

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