There’s now less than a month to go until the opening of the Lido’s 90th year and so maybe time to make sure your swimwear is still presentable.
With that in mind we thought we would take a look at some of the mini articles in the Peterborough swimming club’s gala programmes.
The Swimming club’s gala programme of 1968 presented a ‘Modern and Old Fashion Costume Parade’. The article described the early history of swimwear and the history of the swimwear collection featured in the parade.
The gala’s swimwear parade called ‘Twelve Decades of Swimwear from Victoria to Elizabeth’ was arranged and directed by Derrick C Plume and Compered by Mavis Margaret Plume.
The article in the 32nd annual Swimming Club Gala programme was entitled- ‘HOW IT ALL BEGAN’
‘Authors describe and artists depict bathing and swimming from earliest times. Sometimes participants wore garments for bathing but more often than not they bathed nude. That is until well into the nineteenth century, when authorities decreed women should wear a costume for bathing. From about 1820 though men were not required to wear anything until the late 1870s.
It was in 1952 that Mrs Mavis Plume of Studio Margaret first conceived the idea of a collection of period swimwear for Swimming Clubs to use. It took another two years to collect sufficient costumes to be able to offer them for hire. Back in 1954 Studio Margaret had a stock of just over sixty costumes. Today they have well over three hundred and fifty.
From the first simple bathing gowns the 1850s, swimwear manufacture have processed through twelve decades to its present position where a swimming costume receives all the thought, care and attention applied to any other item of fashionable wear. At the swimwear parade on Saturday 6thJuly 1968 over fifty costumes were shown, demonstrating both ladies’ and gentlemen’s swimwear from the voluminous garments of Victorian times to the minute bikinis which just about receive the approval of bath superintendents today’.
