Amber Butchart is the first to admit she’s not a strong swimmer – yet that hasn’t stopped her from taking a deep dive into the history of Britain’s enduring love affair with swimming and aquatic style. A fashion historian from Margate, known for her on-screen role on BBC’s Great British Sewing Bee, it was during the pandemic that her passion for tidal pools and cold water swimming began — and ultimately sparked the idea for an exhibition. She says: “I love this idea of people trying to contain nature, so it’s really these links between design, swimming and the seaside that’s been so important for me to explore.”

A guest curator at Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style, Butchart explains that “understanding our relationship with water through design and clothing” is what really brought this major exhibition together. After all, when was the last time you seriously thought about the design of the swimsuit you put on in the changing room? Or the architecture of the London lido down your road? “The history of swimwear and swimming is fascinating, as it mirrors wider changes in society over the past century,” explains Butchart. “Whether that’s around issues of bodily autonomy and agency, or how we spend our leisure time.”

The exhibition features 200 objects spanning the past 100 years from around 50 lenders across Europe, specifically chosen to explore swimming’s evolution in social, cultural, technological and environmental realms. “The show itself is structured through three spaces in which we swim, so we begin in the pool, we then move into the lido and we finish swimming through nature,” explains Butchart. 

Lucy Morton in her GB Olympic swimsuit. Image: John Capstack/Showtown Blackpool. Image: John Capstack

Amber Butchart

The story begins in the 1920s, when swimwear began to be marketed for swimming rather than the Victorian-style bathing, and when beach holidays exploded in popularity. One of the oldest items on display is a striped woollen swimsuit from 1933, alongside an Olympic gold medal awarded to swimmer Lucy Morton in the 1924 Paris games, when she became the first British woman to win a solo Olympic title in swimming for the 200m breaststroke. 

It would’ve been remiss not to acknowledge the impact swimwear had on the fashion world, but Butchart was keen to avoid the shallow stereotypes that come with women modelling swimwear for the male gaze, exemplified in things like the Sennett Bathing Beauties: a collection of women performing in bathing costumes who appeared in short films during the 1920s. 

That said, when the opportunity to display Pamela Anderson’s very-own, ruby-red Baywatch swimsuit – which is quite easily the most famous swimsuit in the world, with the US TV series drawing an estimated 1.1 billion weekly viewers at its peak in the 1990s – it was an opportunity Butchart couldn’t turn down, but not for the reasons you may think. “It's incredible to be showing Pamela Anderson's iconic Baywatch swimsuit in the exhibition, especially at this pivotal point when she has reclaimed her own image, and has designed and modelled her own swimwear.”

The exhibition highlights how Baywatch’s costumes were based on swimsuits worn by real lifeguards in Southern California. Each of the actors were given costumes specially adapted for their specific proportions, and the show’s popularity put the one-piece back in the spotlight, while also becoming synonymous with the series. 

Pamela Anderson in Baywatch

American Olympic medallists Amanda Beard, left, Natalie Coughlin, right, and Michael Phelps pose with in high technology Speedo LZR Racer swimsuits. Image: Associated Press/Alamy Stock Photo

The rise of the bikini is also spotlighted via a loan from the BikiniARTmuseum, situated in the German town of Bad Rappenau. Two-piece swimwear was first called a ‘bikini’ in July 1946, when French designer Louis Réard debuted the navel-exposing design at the Molitor pool in Paris, and named after Bikini Atoll, site of American nuclear test explosions. Réard’s first bikini design featured newsprint, and one of the earliest surviving examples of this, from 1951, is on show. 

Despite its name, however, this exhibition isn’t all about style. Swimwear, after all, was initially created for purpose-driven performance. Advances in textile technology are examined, with stand-out innovations including a 1930s woollen Jantzen swimsuit with a Y-shaped back t designed for speed improvements, and a 1960s swimsuit made of Bri-Nylon and designed with Olympic champion swimmer Judy Grinham (who was only the second woman to win solo gold for Britain in the pool at the Olympics).

Another highlight is the hugely controversial LZR Racer swimsuit. Introduced in 2008, the LZR Racer was a high-performance swimsuit developed by Speedo in collaboration with Nasa and the Australian Institute of Sport – and it revolutionised competitive swimming by offering swimmers significant advantages in speed, buoyancy, and drag reduction. But when 79 of 108 world records were broken by swimmers wearing the suit in its first year – as well as winning 94 per cent of the swimming gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics – it was banned in all competitions by world-governing body Fina on grounds of technical doping.  

Finally, style and swimwear would be nothing without the pools and lidos it is influenced by. Expect to spot the Jubilee Pool, opened in Penzance in 1935 and known for its unusual triangular shape, with a deep dive into how it has been regenerated by the local community, including its transformation to include the UK’s first geothermal powered seawater pool, heated all year round. Also featured is the London Aquatics Centre, designed by the late Zaha Hadid, which has become an architectural landmark in East London and a cornerstone of the 2012 London Olympics legacy. 

Tim Marlow, director and CEO of the Design Museum, adds: “The story of swimming is more than just a story of sport, as our new exhibition makes abundantly clear. By examining the culture of swimming through the lens of design, we explore a range of evolving ideas about the way we have lived from the beginning of the 20^th century to the present, from materials and making to leisure, travel, performance, wellbeing and the environment.”

Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style is at The Design Museum from 28 March-17 August 2025. Visit designmuseum.org.uk

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