By the time an item of clothing finds its way to Costco, you can bet it's been around for many fashion cycles. So although I pride myself on my au-courantitude, I was surprised on a recent visit to a nearby Costco to discover massive quantities of a garment I'd never heard of: the skirtini.
For the similarly clueless, a skirtini is a modest two-piece swimsuit consisting of a tank top and a skirted bottom. Here's a visual cue (from Lands' End):

In my defense, I will say that I pay little attention to swimsuit trends. That's because I am in that infinitesimal minority of American women for whom the purchase of a swimsuit is utterly angst-free. Indeed, for all my fashion mania I spend more time comparing goggle designs than I do worrying about my swimsuits. My excuse: for 17 years I swam on a masters swim team, and I still swim four or five miles a week in a pool or San Francisco Bay. Ergo, my needs are ridiculously basic: I buy Speedo one-piece racing suits, size 34, preferably in the flyback or recordbreaker style, from online stores like Swim Outlet or Sierra Trading Post. (Speedo is the only brand that fits my long torso, size 34 always works, and Speedo's Endurance fabric really, truly resists the ravages of chlorine.) The first time I try a suit on is when I'm ready to go into the water. I would never (a) pay more than $70 for a suit, (b) buy a suit with bra cups, ruffles, a skirt, or a halterneck, or (c) do anything except swim or kayak in a swimsuit.
But, as I said, I'm in the minority.
What caught my attention about the skirtini, aside from its appalling matronliness, was, naturally, its name. It's clearly a blend of "skirt" and the suffix "-ini," from "bikini"--except there's nothing bikiniesque about it. I began thinking about how we got from bikini to skirtini. Here's a little historical-sartorial-lexical summary.