By Deborah Osterberg
Dramatic turning points in fashion, especially women’s fashion, have initially been seen by many as disruptive, even scandalous.
Nowhere has this been truer than at the seaside … Capitola, one of the earliest seaside resorts in California, is one such place.
Women’s bathing costumes first stirred up the sands of Capitola Beach in the late 19th century.
By the mid-1920s the form-fitting swimsuit conceived of by Kellerman, sans stockings, became the norm for the entire family as seen in this photo of the Daubenbis family on Capitola Beach. • Daubenbis Collection, courtesy of the Capitola Historical Museum
In 1887, the “modern” bathing costumes worn at Camp Capitola were said to reveal “nature ‘as she is’ and it is a noticeable feature that the better developed the wearer, the more scanty the suit.” These so-called “scanty” outfits still required women to cover their shoulders and to wear opaque stockings with slippers.
Fashion, a form of self-expression, also acts as a cultural mirror. The 2025 exhibition, The Naughty Surf — Fashion Turning Points in Capitola, 1860s-1960s, will explore how changes in society, especially women’s roles and expectations, were reflected in fashion. It will also examine how some innovations in fashion technology contributed to moments of cultural transformation.
Inspiration for this exhibition came from an 1888 Stockton Evening Mail article entitled “The Naughty Surf,” written by a local pastor. In the article Reverend Bane declared that at seaside resorts “…naughty abbreviated bathing suits are to be seen … They are an abomination to decency and to modesty.” The Reverend also warned of the temptation to form hasty resort alliances as well as the wickedness of women drinking and reading trashy novels during their seaside vacations.
To understand the freedom Victorian women felt when visiting a seaside resort like Capitola, the exhibition reviews how women of that time dressed in everyday life, especially why, not just women (yes — children and some men, too) wore corsets.
Exhibits will examine both the benefits and health consequences of such undergarments.
In 1905, Annette Kellerman, an Australian, was the first woman to attempt a swim of the English Channel, a feat achieved by American Gertrude Ederle in 1926. Kellerman’s life story was dramatized in the 1952 motion picture, Million Dollar Mermaid, starring Esther Williams, and Ederle’s achievement was depicted in the 2024 film, Young Woman and the Sea. • Image: Library of Congress
Early visitors to Camp Capitola were farmers, temporarily escaping the sweltering inland valleys, who came in their old clothes to wade into the surf. The subsequent bathing costumes of the late1860s through the 1890s were not meant for swimming, but instead for the surf bathing craze in which one gently waded into the surf (often holding on to a safety rope) to receive the circulation benefits of salt-water.
According to Doretta Davanzo Poli, author of the book, Beachwear and Bathing Costume, the mid-19th century woman’s bathing costume (often made of wool or flannel) consisted of:
“… puffed trousers, narrowing at the ankles only, covered by an overgarment with a closefitting bodice, a belted waist and a short skirt reaching to the knee. The hair was hidden under a large bathing cap or straw hat, and the feet shod with flat, light slippers.”
The new exhibition traces the change from bathing costumes to swimsuits from the late 19th to the early 20th century … a change spurred by women’s entrance into competitive swimming for the first time.
One exhibit will focus on how the revolutionary one-piece, form-fitting swimsuit invented by Australian swimmer Annette Kellerman in 1905 ushered in a period of rapid and disruptive change in seaside fashions.
Women bathers were still expected to wear stockings with their bathing costumes up to World War I. Note that gentlemen of the era could bare both their shoulders and legs without care. • Postcard, courtesy of the Capitola Historical Museum
This fashion turning point led to swimsuit regulations, complete with officers equipped with tape measures to ensure the proper length of a lady’s swimsuit. Some women at East Coast and Southern California beaches were even arrested for violations.
Thankfully, Santa Cruz and Capitola area beaches avoided such scenes. A local commentor put it nicely in 1916 …
“Everything goes on the Bay of Monterey, or nearly nothing, if the garments are made up that way.”
The exhibition follows the evolution of the swimsuit in the 20th century, from the first two-piece swimsuits in the 1940s (which dared not reveal the belly button) to the 1946 debut of the shocking bikini in Paris (which did).
One hundred years of the swimsuit concludes with the skimpier bikinis of the1960s, and even a call by some of the counterculture, for getting rid of the swimsuit all together.
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The Naughty Surf exhibition premieres at the Capitola Historical Museum, 420 Capitola Ave., at noon Friday, March 14, and will run through the end of December. Throughout 2025, the admission-free museum will be open every Friday through Sunday from noon until 4 p.m. For information, call 831-464-0322.