Down to the Sea in Style

Women have long appeared as badly suited for water as fish out of it. Bathing suits did them proud on the beach, but anyone intent on snorkeling or scuba diving was bound to find her bikini at loose ends down in the deep. Trouble was that so few women were interested in underwater sports that designers gave little thought to aquatic chic. By now, though, female skindivers are everywhere, and fashion has caught up with their demands; at long last they are able to go down to the sea in style.

Shocking as Eels. The new wet suits, exotic and brilliant as tropical fish, keep women just as fashionable under water as they should be on the sands of St. Tropez. Diving outfits by White Stag and Healthways glimmer in vivid hues; Parkway Fabricators offers a spectrum of shades, plus prints and patterns in color combinations as shocking as eels. The Voit Rubber Corp. highlights a collection of dazzlingly designed short-sleeved jackets, most popular for water-skiing but also considered eminently useful by such diverse divers as Prince Rainier of Monaco and Mets Pitcher Jerry Koosman.

Underwater wear has not always looked so good. Time was when the only safe way an amateur diver could tolerate cold deep-sea temperatures was in the same sort of black rubber "dry suit" (socalled because it kept water out) worn by U.S. Navy frogmen during World War II. Effective but cumbersome, the old suit required courses in calisthenics to put it on: one version had to be squirmed into through the neck hole, another through a single narrow slit in the front. Getting dressed too quickly resulted in overheating and perspiration. Appropriately enough, it was the company owned by famed French Underwater Explorer Jacques Cousteau (U.S. Divers Co.) that studied the problems of the dry suit and answered them in the marketplace with the wet suit.

Death on Foam. The basic strategy in wet-suit design is not to keep water out but to let just enough in to absorb body heat and circulate it. To achieve that end, manufacturers used a specially treated synthetic rubber called foam neoprene (containing tiny bubbles of trapped gas for better insulation) that allowed the proper slow seepage of water. But the early wet suits looked as awful as dry suits, only wetter. And they were black. Dye, it turned out, was death on foam neoprene; any injection of color considerably weakened the rubber. So did regular exposure to air. Finally the solution was found: a protective nylon knit fabric that would adhere to the neoprene and keep it durable whatever the color or weather.

Slingshot Neckline. For dedicated swimmers who do not plunge to the depths, there is still the old tank suit, but Gertrude Ederle would be astounded. Hardly a high-fashion designer has not had his way with it; as a result, the style abounds in a flurry of top-label interpretations, all faithful to the pure lines and practicality of the original, but a far cry away in fit and flair. Geoffrey Beene and Jacques Tiffeau stick to the basic, scoop-necked design, but Donald Brooks makes a slingshot of the neckline of his black ribbed-nylon version; Bill Blass plunges one tank top to the waist and leaves one entire shoulder off another. Children's Designer Florence Eiseman, yielding to demands by mothers who want to look as good as daughters, makes a terry-cloth tank suit that absorbs figure faults along with water.

But for genuine long-distance swimmers, the tank suit to put a lid on it is White Stag's Speedo. The all-nylon suit, worn by all but one of the 1968 Olympic Gold Medal winners, can even be had with a racing stripe down the side. Speedo wearers do not even have to make the crawl from Dover to Calais: the suit looks authentic enough to get there on its own.

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