Brief, Briefer, Briefest

In the ad game, last week was the greatest week for nudes ever. Take the situation in Manhattan newspaper dailies. There were nudes--or almost nudes --running full-page and in every style from hazy photographic to weirdly Beardsley and hard-edge pop. And the reason the models looked so naked was that the merchandise they sported would take up no more space than there is inside a midget's vest pocket. The seasonal subject was summer beachwear, and the uniform of the day was the ever briefer bikini.

The terry-cloth people, for their part, were pushing the "hip-buckled bikini with the little-boy legs" (some little boy!). An ad for the Cole of California line tried to make you think of that tiny piece of Acrilan acrylic knit as a "sizzle of orange with hot pink." For "a certain kind of woman who'd like to retrace Gauguin's steps," Peck & Peck was arguing that you didn't have to go to Tahiti to wear an island-print bikini.

Lord & Taylor breathlessly advertised that they at last had their Emilio Pucci bikinis in stock, sold them out in two days. Ohrbach's looked over the situation, decided that on the ratio of bikini to flesh, what they'd better advertise was the tan ("A little green buys a lot of tan at Ohrbach's"). And Arnold Constable ran three lissome lovelies in bikinis with a message guaranteed to send every woman reader back to her diet tables: "A reward for every good girl who gave up malteds last March."

The big surge to bikinis has been in the offing for a long time; 65% of the young set has already gone over, and this seems the season when the more mature will follow suit. Manufacturers are doing all they can to make the changeover more enticing: bikinis this season are a glory of color, polka dots and beguiling patterns. And the news from the French Riviera, where the vogue began, is, in brief, just that. Less is on the way.

The in-swinger's suit for Continental beaches this summer is the new "shiner," which is slicker and shorter than ever and made of glossy "power stretch" and other synthetic fabrics that need no supports, cling to every curve and dimple like a coat of suntan oil.

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