Grace Kelly and Jane Birkin have their names eternally embossed in our style consciousness as ambassadresses of two handbag of  Hermès, but Brigitte Bardot has her name irrevocably implanted in our style brains as the image of an entire clothing category, THE BIKINI.

When Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder, a shell diver emerged from water in a white Bikini in Dr. No (1962), the first James Bond movie, she made history: the then young unknown Swiss actress instantly became an international star, that beach scene of her wearing the bikini became one of the most unforgettable scenes in all James Bond movies, and the white buckled bikini she wore became one of the most iconic bikinis in the movie history.

But years before that, Brigitte Bardot, a then young French actress with the background of ballerina and a body of Venus, had already been a European sensation with another white bikini in the French film ​« Et Dieu… créa la femme »(1956), directed by her then husband Roger Vadim. And then for the next two decades, BB would wear different bikinis, in prints or solid colors, strolling in Saint Tropez, the small coastal town in Côte d'Azur in south France which she would also made famous, with or without the male company, most of the times without shoes, and made bikini an essential part of so many women's summer wardrobe, that she should perhaps get a special bikini medal by all the bikini makers of her era, until Brigitte Bardot decided to dedicate her life to loving and saving animals in the early 1970s.

But even today, when one thinks of bikini, it is almost impossible not to think of Brigitte Bardot, and "Brigitte Bardot in a Bikini on the Beach" will make such a symmetrically sounded statement and esthetically pleasing scene.

In her Hollywood years, Elizabeth Taylor had been often compared to Ava Gardner, and in many ways, she was like a young Ava Gardner: They both have exquisite face and devastating figure, they both can be elegant and yet vulgar, and they were both born seducers who can get any men they want. In the film The Barefoot Countess(1954), Ava Gardner had seduced all the men on a yacht in a  black velvet bathing suit with golden fringes. Elizabeth Taylor had wanted that role.

But she did not need to worry, a few years later, in the film Suddenly, Last Summer(1959), Elizabeth Taylor would seduce the whole nation with a white swim suit, although the story line was as dark as it could be for that time period.

Ava Gardner did not just live, she LIVED; she did not love, she LOVED; she did not just enter, she made an ENTRANCE: The first time when she stood in front of a camera, the camera declared its love for her; The first time when she walked around MGM studio, her new home as a new hire, the then already huge star of Hollywood, Mickey Rooney, fell for her; Then more men of Hollywood,  including Frank Sinatra. She became known as "The world's most beautiful animal."

In the film The Barefoot Condessa(1954), Ava Gardner as Maria Vargas, a sultry Spanish dancer, was invited by one of her Latin admirers, Alberto Bravano to his yacht in French Riviera. In one scene, she walked along the yacht in a gold and black cover-up, until she arrived at the front, where she stopped, stood, took off her cover-up, dropped it, revealing her sculpted body in a halter neck black velvet bathing suit with golden fringes. All the eyes of the men there were on her, as they should, as she wanted them to do. That's how Ava Gardner made her ENTRANCE in life.

When even the whole Hollywood was not enough, Ava Gardner packed her suitcase, and made a new entrance across the Atlantics, into Spain, the country with which she fell in love while filming Pandora and The Flying Dutchman(1951) in Costa Brava.

Like Pandora, the society woman she played in the movie, Ava Gardner would watch bull fights and made men fight for her once she was in Spain, and she would drink, dance and swim.  Ava Gardner loved swimming, and with a body of Venus, she could always make an ENTRANCE while putting on a swimsuit, like she did in The Barefoot Condessa.