All Tanked Up

Once bathing suits were sturdy little numbers, more comfortable than dazzling. But it would not do to make a vogue of the practical, and fashion dismissed tank suits with alarm, cried out for prettier versions that covered less, described more. What came in one piece soon came in two, grew teenier and weenier, until last year's bikini could barely be seen by the naked eye. The logical next step: no fashion but a felony called indecent exposure.

The jet set doesn't give a fig for propriety, wouldn't swap bikinis for Fort Knox. But most buyers and designers this year reluctantly gave ground, turned around, backtracked, and ended up where the alarm began.

Well, not quite. For while the new suits run in one loose-hanging piece from the tip of the collarbone to the top of the thigh, they are sometimes as provocative as if they were made of isinglass instead of ordinary jersey and nylon knits. The most popular model has a blouson top, designed to be "loose as a fat man's undershirt," which more than fulfills its promise before nipping in just below the belly. But what the blouson obscures of the chest, it more than makes up for by leaving off the standard modest skirt, affording emphasis at the lower symphysis--an alternative for girls whose waists are going slack, and a consolation prize for men who have to look somewhere.

More high-style versions do even more concealing, can be even more revealing. Shaped rather like dancers' leotards, the most far-out have full-length sleeves. "Chic this year," explains Harper's Bazaar, which ought to know, "is the sheltered woman in the sun, long-sleeved swimsuit and long-stemmed woman."

Prim as the leotards start out, they are saved by their necks at the finish. For whether laced up the front or left gaping, scooped out, cut in a V, or zippered (one hasty pull affords the shy an emergency exit), most of the models offer a plunge of sorts--not just down to, but between, in a passage as perilous as the strait between Charybdis and Scylla. It may not be quite so much fun for women, but men will find the dip infinitely more invigorating than one in the sea.

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