Sharon, resident:
What was the latest bathing suit fashion in 1890? Look carefully at The Baths at Ostend and you’ll find out. The beachwear Ensor drew is a good indication of the trends at the time. He did pick the most daring outfits with lots of bare arms and knees on show. In fact, more women would have worn skirts and long undergarments back then. But of course, Ensor obviously wanted everyone to show as much bare flesh as possible for his water ballet.
The last few years of the 19th century saw the transition from the two-piece to the one-piece bathing suit. The first modern swimsuits were usually in one colour: red, blue or black. The sailor motif with wide horizontal stripes also first became fashionable at that time. However, they were still made from wool, which made them incredibly heavy when wet.
It would take another twenty years before we would see anything resembling the figure-hugging swimming costumes we are familiar with today. Olympic swimmer Annette Kellerman was arrested in the United States as recently as 1907, for wearing an outfit whose greatest merit was that she could actually swim really fast in it. And the bikini? Ensor died in 1949. By then it had been invented, but was not yet popular on the North Sea coast.