Product Trends Tab

The trends are located on the left hand side on any page of our website. We tagged all of our swimwear into at least one, but often up to five or six, of these 31 categories allowing you to find swimsuits that incorporate a certain trend you’re interested in. On every product page, just below the item description, there is a collection of tabs. One of these tabs is a “Product Trends” tab, so you can see what trends a swimsuit incorporates. You can also add your own tags!

Sassy Sienna by OndadeMar Vintage, a great example of Convertible Swimwear

One of our new trends is Convertible Swimsuits. Convertible swimsuits means the suit converts into many different styles. For example, the Sassy Sienna by OndadeMar Vintage can be worn as a v-neck, a halter, or a bandeau top.

Another one of our great new trends is Ruffles, which we recently introduced by showing you how to get Katy Perry’s look. Ruffled swimwear is playful and adds visual interest to any suit.

A great trend to get bang for your buck from is our Reversible Swimsuit trend. This means that you’re swimsuit has reversible fabric and can be worn on either side. A great example of reversible swimwear is any swimsuit by Maaji Swimwear as all of their suits are reversible!

By sorting our swimsuits by trend we hope we have made our large selection seem smaller so you can spend less time stressing over swimwear and more time poolside.

Click to view our Clearance SALE

Ahhh, Mondays. The day when your swimsuits are hung up to dry and your beach towels folded away – we feel your pain. Although we can’t magically flip the calendar to the weekend, we can tell you all about the updated swimwear clearance section on our new website. Hopefully a little retail therapy for the swimsuit fashionista goes a long way to cure a case of the Mondays.

Layered Navigation

Everyone loves a good sale, BUT finding the right item can be daunting. Our new Clearance section is equipped with layered navigation allowing you to narrow down your search and find the perfect suit – faster!

A FEW TIPS: Sorting by price allows you to chose the price range that best fits your budget, and next to each price range it displays how many swimsuits are for sale within that range. Looking for something from $0-$100? No problem! Sorting by brand allows you to see the best deals we have within each designer. If you’re less sure about what brand you’re interested in, sorting by size allows you to narrow down the search for a size that will fit you. If you’re interested in a certain look, you can sort by style, such as Brazilian Cut bikinis or Full Coverage bottoms, or trend, such as swimsuit halter tops or bandeau tops, allowing you to find what you want on sale quickly.

Layered Navigtion in Action

The cool thing about this layered navigation is you can funnel through options and find the best deal. If you click on a category you’re interested in, say Skirted Bottoms, then you can select a price, and then click on size Large to view only skirted bottoms within that price and available in that size. You can continue selecting remaining categories until the perfect swimsuit for your qualifications is sorted. If at any point you want to widen your search again, you simply “X” out of the category you no longer are interested in.

Shopping our swimsuit sale just got a whole lot easier, maybe not as easy as lounging by the pool, but definitely easy enough to take away the case of the Mondays.

Zanzibar String Bikini by OndadeMar

In the past year, we gave up vacations in Santorini and Ibizia for the Santorini String and the Ibizia Bandeau. We did without sailing trips for the Ana Sailor Bikini. And we sacrificed tanning for our fluorescent office lights. And we would do it all again because it allowed us to create a better website to ensure that you, our loyal Orchid Boutique customer, has the best shopping experience so that you can easily purchase the perfect swimsuit for your needs. Over the next few days on our blog, we’re going to be giving you an exclusive tour the new features of our website – so keep your tray tables in upright position and prepare for takeoff.

New 'AddThis' Widget

A great way to get the word out about a swimsuit you love or one you think your friend might love is with our new ‘AddThis’ widget. It gives customers a myriad of easy ways to share a product such as posting it to your Facebook, tweeting about it on Twitter, bookmarking it, printing it, among others. It can be found right next to the “Add set to cart” fuchsia button on any item in our store.

A second feature we’re proud to introduce is the “Designer Info” and “Style & Fit” tabs on each product page. The Designer Info tab allows you to learn more about the designer of the swimsuit you’re interested in, such as what they are known for and the country of origin. The Style and Fit tab informs you about the sizing of each item, including notes from our fashion specialists, to help you ensure you’re ordering the size that’s right for you.

Our new Designer Info and Style & Fit tabs

If you need fashion advice from a specialist who has seen or tried on the product you like, you can click on the “Email Our Fashion Advisers” hyperlink on any product page, and an automated email that includes the product name and reference ID will appear in your default email browser, allowing easy, one-click access to our fashion specialists.

We can’t wait to tell you more about all of our new features, but in the meantime, we welcome you to shop around check it out for yourself: http://www.theorchidboutique.com/!

But sometimes a celebrity like Halle Berry comes around, and chooses to name her fragrance Pure Orchid, and that’s when we think to ourselves, we DIG that. Totally with our train of thought. After all, we did name our online store The Orchid Boutique.

Exotic Puntas Argeratum by Maaji

Orchids are exotic flowers with usually vibrant, vivid colors. They are exclusively able to grow only under specific temperatures, with all the elements being just right for them to bloom. They are wild delicate plants, but also quite bold in their representation of color. Orchids are distinct. Their characteristics are our inspiration for naming this boutique. Our goal is to offer a unique source for designer swimwear that is exclusive and exotic. Apparently just like Halle, we name our essence after a striking organism. Not only cool to emulate its characteristics, but also to smell like one.

We’ve already recommended our bikini pick for you Halle, so we are A-Ok with you smelling like an Orchid. Would complement your look!

Get the Exotic Puntas Argeratum bikini here.

Monokini in the 60s

Ok, so here’s a bit of trivia on the monokini one piece. In 1964, the first monokini was designed here in the US by an Austrian-American fashion designer, Rudi Gernerich. It first appeared in Look magazine as part of an article about futuristic fashions.

We already told you about how Zoe Duchesne wore the fabulous Bendito Napoleon topless in the latest Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, and turns out that, well, this thought had crossed the mind of the original monokini creator. Gernerich’s monokini was designed to be topless. It looked like a one-piece from mid waist down suspended from two halter straps running down the cleavage of, you guessed it, bare breasts.

As you might imagine, this was very risqué for the time. Although the 60s were at the height of the Sexual Revolution, people were still largely conservative. The New York City Police Department had strict instructions to arrest any woman found wearing a monokini in the city’s parks, and a 19 year old woman was charged $100 for wearing one on a public beach in Chicago. Despite its many critics, the monokini sold in record numbers but very few people wore them in public.

Grafitti Exoticae Monokini by Maaji

Since the monokini comes in a variety of styles now, you don’t have to wear them topless if you don’t want to! One of our favorites is Graffiti Exoticae Monokini by Maaji Swimwear, which has the designer’s notorious collage of fabrics with a polkadot pattern on ruched straps. The straps go over the shoulder and tie at the back. To look at more of our monokini styles go here.

Animal print swimsuits were first seen in the 1950s. It was quite a revolution! Swimsuits had printed fabrics for years before that, but putting animal prints on swimsuits made a literal “splash.” In order to sell women on the idea of animal prints on their swimwear, advertisers came up with this tagline: “If you can’t drive a Jaguar, wear one.”

Me-ow! We sure would love to do both if possible: drive a sexy car and own luxurious animal print swimwear! But if we’re forced to chose, we’ll take the bikinis and head to the beach! Especially with choices like the Tamed Tiger Bandeau bikini from Sabz Luxury and the Bardot Ruffle bikini by ViX. Yes, please! Or you can check out the entire selection of animal print swimsuits to find what suits your inner animal.

How’d you do? When you’re all done, tell us what surprised you in the comments!

Bendita Vainilla by Agua Bendita Swimwear

What does the word “bikini” mean, anyway? Does “bi” stand for “two” and “kini” stand for piece? You might think so (we certainly did!), but it’s not true at all. The word “bikini” comes from the name of a Micronesian island named Bikini Atoll. And the bikini wasn’t even invented there – it was invented in Paris by Parisian fashion designer Louis Réard, just two weeks after Bikini Atoll was the site of a nuclear test.

Réard named his revealing two-piece creation “the Bikini” for its explosive effect on anyone that viewed it. And it made quite a stir amongst everyone, including the models he asked to wear it! Most models turned it down for being too revealing, until a model named Michèle Bernadini stepped up to the challenge. Below she can be seen wearing Réard’s creation poolside for the Paris fashion press in 1946.

We don’t think the original bikini seen here is the most flattering suit for Ms. Bernadini, but we love that designer Réard took the risk and made a suit that was so ahead of its time! It took a while after that for bikinis to catch on, but boy are we glad they finally did!

Annette sewed leggings onto her swimsuit to comply with the law, but she wasn't happy about it

If you’ve never heard of Annette Kellerman, we’re hardly surprised. She’s not exactly the household name. But we, the ladies of Swim Couture, sing the praises of this 20th Century woman who did so much for women’s swimwear!

Born in 1887, Annette Kellerman was already making waves around the world by age 20, when she invented synchronized swimming by performing the first water ballet in a glass tank at the New York Hippodrome. The next year, she was arrested in Boston for attempting to swim on a public beach in a men’s swimsuit – which ended above the knee. Scandalous! In court, Annette insisted that she was simply trying to be practical and that the leggings and heavy bathing dresses required of women at the time were like “swimming in chains.” She also said, “I can’t swim wearing more stuff than you hang on a clothesline.”

To that we say: “You go girl!”

Annette was a professional swimmer, a vaudeville and film star,  a writer, and of course an advocate for the change of women’s swimwear and women’s rights. She even has her very own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

A thought on how far we’ve come. From THAT to this:

Cabachon One Piece Swimsuit by Badgley Mischka

Hats off to women’s swimwear.

Source: “Annette Kellerman – Australia’s Forgotten Icon” by Kerrie Davies, Marie Claire, February 2, 2007.

The Titanic.

That’s a little spooky, but it makes sense if you know about The Titanic. It was meant to be the height of luxury, with all the amenities that first class passengers could ask for. The swimming pool on the Titanic was six feet deep and filled with heated salt water. There were separate swim times for men and for ladies, and it cost $1 to swim. That’s pretty expensive when you realize that $1 in 1912 is roughly the same as $20 today! Would you pay $20 to swim in a pool for a few hours with no guys? (It seems that children also weren’t allowed – maybe that’s worth the 20 bucks!)

OndadeMar Vintage Swimwear - perfect for modern day cruise ships

But now that we think about it, how come James Cameron didn’t take advantage of this historic fact and give us some Leonardo-DiCaprio-in-the-pool eye candy in the film Titanic? Really!

Source: “Titanic: A Floating Palace” from Titanic – A Voyage of Discovery