Pamela’s Baywatch suit to illegal Speedos: London’s Design Museum explores the evolution of swimwear

The red swimsuit worn by Pamela Anderson in Baywatch – one of TV’s most iconic looks – is now on display at London’s Design Museum. Seen by over a billion viewers in the ’90s, the TYR-designed one-piece became synonymous with the show’s slow-motion beach scenes, epitomising ’90s style and beauty standards.

This swimsuit is the centrepiece of Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style, a new exhibition exploring 100 years of swimwear and its impact on fashion, culture, and identity.

The show features everything from vintage bikinis to Olympic gear, like Tom Daley’s Tokyo 2020 trunks and Alice Dearing’s Team GB cap. It also dives into gender, performance, and the politics of swimwear, with a spotlight on the gendered history of men’s swimwear, including controversial Speedos and their role in challenging norms.

As Amber Butchart, the guest curator of the exhibition explains: “The show itself is divided into three sections in which we swim. So, we begin in the pool. We then move into the Lido, where we are now, and we finish in nature.”

“Through those sections, we think about different themes, whether it is leisure, the democratisation of travel, entertainment, things like Pamela Anderson’s swimsuit, swimming on screen, through to things like materials and making, health and wellbeing,” she adds.

Among the exhibition’s standout pieces is one of the earliest surviving bikinis, dating from 1951 and based on the original design by French engineer Louis Réard, who first introduced the garment in 1946. Réard named it the “bikini” after Bikini Atoll, the site of U.S. nuclear testing, predicting the outfit would be just as explosive.

The exhibit also highlights çağdaş designers like Andrea Iyamah, whose Mulan bikini -featuring her signature “Eden Ruffle” -draws inspiration from creation myths and femininity. Also on display is a bikini by Kenya-based Ohana Family Wear, which uses a pattern inspired by Ghanaian Kente cloth, showing that contemporary swimwear has also been reshaped by cultural heritage.

Another key focus of the exhibition is the gendered nature of swimwear, particularly how the history of men’s swimwear has often been overlooked. A display of Speedo briefs, spanning from the 1980s to the 2010s, highlights the shift towards more revealing, performance-focused designs.

Butchart notes, “A lot of the time when people tell histories of swimwear, it’s all focused on women’s bodies and swimwear getting smaller.I wanted to think about it from the perspective of men’s swimwear as well. The high point of that, I suppose, is what we today call the Speedo created by the brand Speedo. This has a really interesting history to it, because in the 1960s, Speedo had a designer called Peter Travis in Australia, and he was really instrumental in terms of creating swimming trunks that had been smaller than ever before.”

Travis’s work revolutionised swimwear by designing briefs that hugged the body and optimised swimming. At the time, the suits were so provocative that men were arrested on Bondi Beach for wearing them.

“When coming into Splash, I did know that it was going to be about swimwear, and obviously the Pamela Anderson swimsuit has been getting a lot of press attention. What I didn’t realize was that there would be a lot more to it than just the fashion elements,” says arka critic Tabish Khan.

“So, for example, it talks about the politicisation of swimming pools. It talks about the male gaze; it talks about the artwork around it. And I think that provides for a much more rounded experience of the exhibition.”

Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style runs at London’s Design Museum until 17 August 2025.