The 2019 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue is a noteworthy one, for many reasons—it brought Tyra Banks out of modeling retirement, and it features Halima Aden as the first model to appear in modest swimwear on its pages. Two brands designed custom suits for Aden to wear on the shoot. And one of them, Cynthia Rowley, is actually putting the burkini it made for the model into production.
Rowley created a two-piece burkini swimsuit featuring long sleeves, hood, and skirted bottom, in one of her signature colorblock prints. And now it’s up on her e-commerce for anyone to preorder.
That wasn’t originally the plan, though.
“The burkini initially started as a one-of-a-kind, custom piece for Halima, but after seeing such a positive response to the editorial, we didn’t have to think twice about putting it into production,” Rowley tells Glamour. “Thinking of fashion with a global mind-set is important to us as a brand, and we saw this as yet another opportunity to cater to our customers while standing behind the powerful and inspirational message the SI Swimsuit Issue brought to the surface. We design our wetsuits to inspire women to try new things and hope the introduction of our burkini will extend this mind-set to women around the world.”
Halima Aden signing issues of the 2019 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in Miami
John Parra
Set to ship on August 1, the Prism Colorblock Burkini runs in sizes XS through L and retails for $295.
The response to the Cynthia Rowley burkini has been strong, says Rowley: “We’ve already received tons of positive responses. We have lots of followers DM’ing us asking what’s next…. Stay tuned!”
Original story:
She’s only 21, but model Halima Aden has already been “the first” in many different ways: She was the first woman to wear a burkini in the Miss Minnesota USA pageant, the first hijab-wearing model to sign a contract with IMG, and now, the first model to appear in a burkini in Sports Illustrated‘s famous swimsuit issue.
On Monday, Sports Illustratedannounced that Aden appears in its annual swim spread, twice. This marks the first time modest swimwear is represented in the issue.
In this shoot, Aden is photographed wearing a modest swimsuit by No Ka’Oi and a multicolor burkini by Cynthia Rowley. Aden’s pages were shot in Kenya, where she lived at a refugee camp before immigrating to the United States when she was 7.
Halima Aden in the 2019 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue
Yu Tsai
Aden’s inclusion in the 2019 Swimsuit Issue is a major step for representation of modest fashion. “This feature is proving that a fully covered hijab wearing model can confidently stand alongside a beautiful woman in a revealing bikini and together they can celebrate one another, cheer each other on, and champion each other’s successes,” the model said in a statement. “Young Muslim women need to know that there is a modest swimsuit option available to them so they can join the swim team, participate in swim class at school, and go with their friends to the beach. Muslim girls should feel confident taking that step and doing so comfortably while wearing a burkini.”
“SI Swimsuit has been at the forefront of changing the narrative and conversation on social issues and preconceived notions. I’m hoping this specific feature will open doors up for my Somali community, Muslim community, refugee community, and any other community that can relate to being different,”Aden continued.
Aden in the 2019 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue
Yu Tsai
In recent editions, the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue has worked to make its pages more inclusive. It began diversifying the sizes of the models it featured in 2015, when Ashley Graham became the first curve model to appear in it. Since then, Hunter McGrady and Veronica Pome’e have modeled for the magazine.
This year’s biggest swim trends are all about making a statement poolside or on the beach (or with your regular clothes, because why not?): floral prints closer to wallpaper than actual nature, geometric cutouts on slick one-pieces, rainbow-grade stripes, ribbed fabrics, ruffled or otherwise accented statement shoulders, and sleeved suits. And you can find takes on each of them at different budgets, from affordable brands like Swimsuits for All and Aerie to designer favorites like Solid and Striped and Chromat.
Read on to recap—and shop—six swim trends you’ll be seeing all over the ’gram in 2019.
Maria Luisa Mendiola has always had an affinity for bold, striking swimsuits—in part because for years, she’d buy them in the hope that they’d take attention away from her feet. She was born with brachymetatarsia, a condition in which one of her toes is visibly shorter than the others. Growing up in Costa Rica, going to the beach was a constant source of anxiety, because it meant going barefoot.
“I was always so uncomfortable, because everything in my body looked ‘normal,’ but I think people were a lot quicker to ask me why my feet looked different,” she says. “Having that conversation was so difficult for me because there was always this taboo about being different.”
Brachymetatarsia is a hereditary condition, and Mendiola reasoned that, while she doesn’t have kids yet, she wants her hypothetical future offspring to feel accepted, no matter what they look like: “I think that, pardon my French, but lit a fire under my ass… I need to make sure that the society that my children live in is going to be much more embracing of differences and empathetic.”
Mendiola recognized that while her condition may be specific, the psychological and social burden of disfigurement—a catchall term that can describe everything from congenital conditions (like cleft lips and palates) to scarring caused by an accident or surgery to paralysis from a stroke or Bell’s Palsy—is something that many more people are familiar with. People with visible disfigurements, for instance, often face conscious and unconscious bias, staring, hostility, and discrimination in the workplace and in school, something that can be debilitating itself, hindering self-esteem and quality of life.
Mendiola decided to confront this issue head-on, quitting her job in finance to enroll in a master’s program at Central Saint Martins, the famed London design school. For her graduate project, she designed a line of swimsuits inspired by disfigurement. That turned into MIGA Swimwear.
PHOTO: Bruna Lacerda/Courtesy of MIGA
When she first started the project, Mendiola connected with several women through a U.K. organization called Changing Faces, which supports and advocates for the estimated 1.35 million people in the country with significant face or body disfigurement, to help develop what would become MIGA. (In the U.S., there is no single organization dedicated to disfigurement—rather, they tend to focus on a specific condition or group of conditions, such as craniofacial anomalies or eczema—so no such overall statistics exist.) Later on, she reached out to potential partners based in the U.S., and eventually found a collaborator in New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center’s burn support group.
Mendiola sat down with women in this group and interviewed about their experiences with swimwear and design preferences (Katuiscia DeJean, one of its members, says she would make her own protective swim layer from the sleeve of a surfing rash guard; another, Mio Acosta, recalls wearing board shorts or leggings and long sleeves to the beach—none of which were particularly comfortable on hot summer days.) They also participated in fittings, modeled, and ultimately walked away with a swimsuit tailored to their individual needs.
PHOTO: Bruna Lacerda/Courtesy of MIGA
Each MIGA suit comes in two versions: one specifically designed with a survivor’s needs in mind (with a detachable skirt, a matching glove, or an asymmetrical sleeve), and one more traditional one-piece or bikini style for or anyone who may not want as much coverage (whether you have a disfigurement or otherwise.) When you purchase one or pledge to the brand’s Kickstarter, you’ll receive a short narrative of someone’s experience living with disfigurement. Through this process and MIGA’s just-launched blog, Mendiola hopes to break the silence around this topic, as well as create a space to talk about what it means to look different—something most women can no doubt relate to.
Isabel Heine, one of Mendiola’s collaborators, who suffered burns on 35 percent of her body during an apartment fire in 2003, says she was particularly drawn to the project because of its focus on women. “Something that I’ve seen in working with different burn patients is that men and women handle scarring very differently,” she says, noting how, in her experience, female survivors tend to need more time adapting to the changes in their appearance. “That was certainly something that I remember dealing with a lot and finding to be the most difficult, because with women, society and ourselves, put so much value in our physical appearance. When that’s completely altered overnight, it’s shocking to your sense of identity.”
PHOTO: Bruna Lacerda/Courtesy of MIGA
Identity was something Mendiola also had to reckon with when choosing the language to use surrounding the line. Some of the consumers she hopes to reach might not necessarily identify with the term “disfigured,” preferring instead to use “visible difference” or the precise name of their condition. She settled on “disfigurement” because experts consider it to be the most neutral and precise term, and it can carry over to any group she works with in future collections.
Acosta says she’s okay with the word “disfigurement,” but there’s another she no longer identifies with: victim. “I feel like we’re more so survivors than we are victims,” she explains. “I know we were victims at one point, but you do survive it and you continue to live.” DeJean adds: “At the end of the day, my scars don’t define who I am. But they helped craft who I’ve become.”
PHOTO: Bruna Lacerda/Courtesy of MIGA Swimwear
The functional elements of a swimsuit designed for burn survivors, such as placing a seam in such a way that it doesn’t irritate a skin graft or adjusting the length of a sleeve so it covers a scar, are important, especially since it’s a group of people that historically hasn’t been catered to. But what might be as vital is the message that MIGA’s existence and mission conveys—one of equality, shattering of prejudices, and self-acceptance.
In recent years celebrities like Chrissy Teigen and Chelsea Peretti have been refreshingly open about the totally normal task breastfeeding and taking pumping breaks while working. We’ve also seen more representation of pregnant women and new mothers in fashion, both in campaigns and on the runway.
At 2018 Miami Swim Week, model Mara Martin walked the Sports Illustrated swimwear show while breastfeeding her five-month-old baby. She was one of 16 finalists chosen to appear at the event, Cosmopolitan reports.
PHOTO: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
Martin strutted down the catwalk in a metallic gold, one-shouldered bikini while carrying her baby, who was wearing noise-canceling headphones and a diaper.
PHOTO: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
Many people praised both Sports Illustrated and Martin for this moment: When SI Swimsuit Edition posted the video of her walk on Instagram, it was met with a range of positive comments, including “Yesssssssss??? normalize bf! Thanks @si_swimsuit,” and (in response to a critic) “I’m really glad this mother is confident and responsible enough to feed her child regardless if you think it’s ‘icky.'”
This isn’t the first time a fashion show celebrates the beauty of various stages of motherhood. Dolce & Gabbana dedicated its entire fall 2015 ready-to-wear collection to moms, sending models down the runway wearing clothes embroidered with sweet phrases like “I love you, mamma” and, in some cases, carrying young children. In 2016 model Diandra Forrest closed the fall 2016 Gypsy Sport show while carrying her seven-month-old daughter close to her chest—and though she wasn’t breastfeeding her baby, she did receive criticism. For its spring 2018 show, Eckhaus Latta cast artist Maia Ruth, who was eight months pregnant, styling her with several undone buttons so as to let her baby bump peek out.
On Monday Martin posted a note to Instagram about the response she’s received in the aftermath of the Sports Illustrated show. She shared a screenshot of a Daily Mail article about her, and captioned it: “Words can’t even describe how amazing I feel after being picked to walk the runway for @si_swimsuit. Anyone who knows me, knows it has been a life long dream of mine. I can’t believe I am waking up to headlines with me and my daughter in them for doing something I do every day. It is truly so humbling and unreal to say the least. I’m so grateful to be able to share this message and hopefully normalize breastfeeding and also show others that women CAN DO IT ALL!”
PHOTO: Frazer Harrison
“But to be honest, the real reason I can’t believe it is a headline is because it shouldn’t be a headline!!!,” the caption continued. “My story of being a mother and feeding her while walking is just that.”
Related: These Photos of Moms Prove Breastfeeding Really Can Be Done Anywhere
The one-piece swimsuit is the perfect canvas for some of the most exciting trends in the market. All-over prints? Inventive cutouts? One-shouldered tops? They’re all represented in this department. And the silhouette remains a staple in the swim space for a reason: It’s versatile (and can easily be worn as a bodysuit off the beach) and will feel just as current next year. If you’re looking to update your summer suit for summer 2018, we’ve got you covered, literally and figuratively, with the 30 one-pieces, ahead.
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Shortly after winning the Miss America swimsuit competition—and making the top 10 in the pageant overall—I was signed by my first television agent, who was a senior partner at one of the best agencies in the business.
It was 2003, and back then—before Instagram, YouTube, and the sheer volume of reality TV we have now—talent scouts all watched pageants to suss out the next big thing. At 37, I am among the most senior of the millennials. Coming of age in the nineties and early 2000s, before social media existed, a surefire way for a young woman with no celebrity connections to make it on TV and get her voice heard was by having a title like Miss Virginia or Miss New York. Pre-Twitter, the pageant was one of the few remotely feasible outlets that let you “go viral” in a positive way.
Thus, ambitious, talented young women across the country, myself included, saw parading around in high heels and a swimsuit as a semi-inconvenient hurdle to jump over to achieve our life goals. We were future award-winning journalists, rocket scientists, esteemed actors, lifesaving oncologists—and we all thought that spraying our bikinied behinds with “butt glue” to keep wedgies at bay and painting our teeth with Vaseline to keep lip gloss from staining our bright white smiles was a great way to move toward these goals.
Nancy’s first wave after being crowned Miss Virginia
Over time, with the rise of social media as a platform, and especially over this past year of #MeToo and Time’s Up, that age-old system has officially stopped working—last week the Miss America Organization canceled the swimsuit competition.
“We are no longer a pageant,” Gretchen Carlson, the organization’s new board of trustees chairwoman, announced. “We are a competition. We will no longer judge our candidates on their outward physical appearance. That’s huge.”
It is huge. While its clout has been diluted over the years, and despite rebranding efforts, the Miss America title is still synonymous with a beautiful, hot body. Rebuking swimsuits, as Miss America has done, along with nixing the evening gown competition, means that essentially the original purveyor of American beauty standards is saying #EffYourBeautyStandards.
It is an unexpected enigma, to say the least, and I welcome it wholeheartedly.
When I competed for Miss America 15 years ago, 10.3 million viewers watched ABC as I was called into the top 10 (about 5.6 million watched last year’s show). As I tottered gingerly on high heels that I never fully managed to dominate, Bachelorette sweethearts Trista Rehn and Ryan Sutter excitedly told the audience that I had won the preliminary swimsuit competition, which to the world meant that I had the best body in my group.
I did not, not by a long shot. In preparation for the pageant, I lost over 50 pounds during my senior year at Harvard, where I majored in women’s studies and wrote my junior thesis on minorities in the Miss America Pageant. While I looked great, even my youthful 21-year-old skin hadn’t fully snapped back from the weight loss without some sagginess. Nor did my weight loss cure my self-esteem issues—I hated my body as I walked that stage, a fraught discovery that became the impetus for my career as the best-selling author of photography-driven health books Pregnancy, OMG! and Body Drama, which feature tons of un-air-brushed images of women of all body types.
And I definitely didn’t have the best walk; in fact, I stumbled and nearly fell on the nationally televised Miss America stage—a nightmare fuel that haunted my dreams for months.
What I did have, however, was the “best” #thinspo story, which I honed for months with an interview coach who reminded me constantly that the Miss America swimsuit competition was won “from the neck up.” (Meaning that if the judges liked me in my interview and wanted me to do well in the pageant, they’d be more forgiving of the spray tan streaks and stretch marks.)
When the time came, I squeezed into a perfectly tailored $400 gold-plated sunshine-yellow size zero bikini and pranced around the stage for about 20 seconds in heels purchased from a quirky Manhattan store that seemed to cater exclusively to drag queens and pageant girls. My performance was enough to snatch that coveted diamond-shaped Lucite award and $2,000, which was, ironically, about half of what I had spent on personal training, spray tanning, seaweed wraps, and body waxing to get my body “swimsuit ready” for the Miss America stage.
PHOTO: Debra Morrison
Nancy with her husband, actor Rupak Ginn, and their two children, August, six, and Nancy, four
Despite my many substantive accomplishments since, even today as a grown woman with a legit mom bod who rocks an XL bathing suit, I am often introduced to new people, whether in auditions or at wine nights with friends as “a beauty queen.”
I didn’t just win a onetime swimsuit award; I had won a lifetime of societal acceptance.
I am extremely proud of how I’ve used my smidgen of social capital to stand at the forefront of the body-positivity movement and help many women, and myself in the process, find self-acceptance. During my reign as Miss Virginia, I marched for choice, performed in The Vagina Monologues, and visited countless schools across the state, where I spoke to thousands of young women and men about a variety of topics important to me, including the then revolutionary concept that feminism wasn’t a dirty word and that boys could be feminists too.
The only reason any of these kids listened to me was because I had a crown on my head, the 2003 version of 150,000 Instagram followers. Would I have been just as successful as I am in my adulthood even if “Miss Virginia” and “swimsuit winner” weren’t in the first paragraph of my biography? The answer is probably no. But for this next generation of young, ambitious women, it’s different.
Time is up for the pedestaling of an individual based on looks. I recount my experience not to lambast the Miss America pageant of yesteryear but to showcase how far the organization has come.
Options to inspire and motivate young people have expanded infinitely. We don’t need a Miss America anymore—the many screens we are tethered to show us a diverse array of wonderful female role models like Tarana Burke, Issa Rae, Gabi Fresh, Michelle Obama…the list goes on and on.
Time is up for the pedestaling of an individual based on looks. I recount my experience not to lambast the Miss America pageant of yesteryear but to showcase how far the organization has come. The first Miss America was crowned in 1921, a mere 11 months after American (white) women gained the right to vote. Increasingly, the nearly 100-year-old event, which started as an Atlantic City tourist draw, has often seemed like a societal anachronism, flying in the face of each new wave of feminism. But it is important to not discount the fact that the diversity of its 91 winners is evidence of its incremental and meaningful evolution. Long before the commercialization of the body-positivity movement and corporate-mandated inclusive advertising, back when the peach crayon in the box was almost always called “flesh,” the Miss America pageant introduced the world to the idea that deaf women, black women, women with short hair, Asian women, opinionated women, children of immigrants, and more could all be considered “beautiful” and “successful” on a global scale. For hundreds of thousands of women from all walks of life, the pageant’s influence on beauty ideals, while nowhere near perfect (considering the limited range of body types), was and remains mind-boggling powerful.
Nancy won the Miss America swimsuit competition in 2003.
Even if Miss America’s rallying cry for a new era of equality turns out to be a swan song for the competition at large, they have determined that it is better to go out in flames on the right side of history, and this is an honorable and brave call.
The loss of a tradition is worth a future of possibility.
GLAAD-award-nominated on-air personality Nancy Redd is the best-selling author of the new book Pregnancy, OMG!, the first-ever diverse photographic guide for expecting women. Nancy’s other books include Body Drama and Diet Drama. Two weeks after graduating from Harvard with a degree in women’s studies, she won the title of Miss Virginia and became a preliminary swimsuit winner at Miss America 2003. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.
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