Thrift Off #2: Laurie's #2 Swimsuit; No Fear of Floppage

If God has ever created a single piece of nonfunctional clothing, it would have to be a bandeau bikini top. If you are merely soaking your feet in a backyard kiddie pool, it is impossible to keep your top on. The very motion of lifting a can of light beer to your mouth will cause the bandeau top to cave in on itself, leaving you with not just one, but two boobs out for all the neighbors to see. Not that I'm speaking from experience. Forget about actually swimming in a pool, or a lake, nonetheless the ocean. Stray boob city.

Despite their structural defects, bandeau bikini tops are hot. Perhaps it is this very suggestion of spontaneous boob floppage that makes them so, or maybe it is the fact that there is nothing more than a tiny, stretchy band of spandex between you and the rest of the world, or because straps are for pussies. Most likely, it is the combination of all these things. Regardless, there is no more brazen way to sit motionless at any beach/pool/backyard summertime function, than in a bandeau bikini.

With that preface I give you my #2 Thrift Off Swimsuit, this multi colored ikat printed bandeau bikini!!!!!!


WOOOOHOOOOO! Never has your Girls Gone Wild moment been so effortless to achieve!!!

But SERIOUSLY. On top of it all (ha) there is this most awesome of all swimsuit prints I have ever seen; a multi colored ikat effect stripe combined with super hero blue. What great, unconventional swimsuit colors.

The other reason that I love this swimsuit, is that I procured it while thrifting an epic bag sale with Holly in Hayward, WI during the summer of 2009*, when she passed it on to me because it was too big for her. It was too big for me also, but I knew that for this level of awesome swimsuit, I could make it fit.

That's right people, I personally tailored this bikini. Tailored. A. Bikini. From a size 10 to a size 4. A lifetime of debt for fashion school was well, well worth it.

*Holly and I will both willingly admit that this was one of our darkest moments, when we left our friend Sarah and her then 6 year old daughter at a petting zoo after it had closed, because we couldn't stop shopping a bag sale where everything you could fit in the bag was $2. You can judge. But that also means that this swimsuit was essentially free.