Brinkley’s bikini tradition lives on.
Sailor Brinkley-Cook featured her supermodel mother Christie Brinkley on the legendary June 1977 cover of Cosmopolitan this week, sharing a series of sun-drenched photos from her vacation in the Turks and Caicos Islands on Instagram.
In the photo, Brinkley-Cook posed in a cobalt blue string bikini with a triangle top and skimpy bottoms that featured straps around her waist.
The look was a modern recreation of the iridescent purple high-cut Norma Kamali bikini that made Christie, now 71, an icon nearly 50 years ago.
That groundbreaking Cosmo cover remains one of Christie’s most memorable moments. In an Instagram post from 2016, the supermodel recalled the moment she first saw a suit held together by a single string.
“I remember the day Francesco Scavullo’s trusted stylist Sean handed me a small pile of strings and asked me to wear them,” she wrote. “I looked back at it and started laughing as I struggled to find the right way to do it. I had never seen anything like it before.”
Christie described the high-cut style as “groundbreaking, racy, sexy and scandalous”, adding: “I absolutely love it!”
“In 1977, this swimsuit was the talk of the town!” Christie wrote in a 2020 Instagram post. “At the time, all bikinis were set low on the buttocks. This high-leg cut made the buttocks a new erogenous zone.”
However, she admitted that she was not confident about filming.
Without modern photography technology, the team had to perfect every detail before taking the photos. “There was no retouching back then, so every strand of makeup and hair was done perfectly,” she recalls. “I remember being worried that I would look fat.”
But now she has her own personal hype team at home. Earlier this month, she posted a series of bikini selfies from a beach vacation with the same family.
Sailor was one of the first to comment on her mother’s post. “Please be careful not to get heatstroke,” she exclaimed.
On Wednesday, Brinkley-Cook shared a second series of vacation photos with the caption, “Spiritually I’m still here 🌺💭.” In these shots, she lounged by the pool in a bright turquoise bikini against a backdrop of pink and red tropical flowers.
Christie welcomed Saylor in 1998 with ex-husband Peter Cook. She is also the mother of daughter Alexa Ray Joel, 40, with ex Billy Joel, and son Jack Brinkley-Cook, 30, with ex Richard Taubman.
