"Surfing's first documented wardrobe malfunction may be attributed to an unlikely candidate: the world's best-selling novelist, Agatha Christie. The English queen of mystery fiction also happened to be a keen surfer. In 1920, Christie set off on an around-the-world adventure of the British Empire's colonies. She learned to surf prone in South Africa, and in Hawaii, she not only became of the first Britons to experience stand-up surfing, but also was introduced to more-functional-swimwear, after her ankle-length "handsome silk bathing dress" was ripped from her body "by the force of the waves."
--Lauren L. Hill
The opening paragraph to her essay "Irreversible Bikini" in The Surfers Journal, June/July 2021.
