The Power of the One-Piece Swimsuit

For a new twist on the swimwear guide, the Cut gave six photographers some of spring’s best suits and asked them to shoot their friends during the first weekend of summer. The goal was not only to explore the intimacy of their friendships, but also to find out which suits look and feel good on real people. What came back is an inspired selection of images, each with its own personality and perspective.

Taken in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Long Island, Miami Beach, Rockaway Beach, and Delhi, New York, the photographs showcase the lively fun of the season in different areas. Zora Sicher’s images are featured here first — the other five portfolios will appear in a slideshow series throughout the week.

In Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Sicher took images of her girlfriends on the steps of a Brooklyn brownstone, using a mix of patterned Zimmermann suits and simple one-pieces from J.Crew and Alix. “I always love to see in a magazine real girls, real women of New York, wearing swimsuits,” she said. “I got all the girls together. We just were like, ‘Okay, let’s see who looks good in what, who feels comfortable in what.’ Most of them actually wore one-pieces. You think of Sports Illustrated and the sexualized girls in swimsuits. But it was important to me to do something pretty real, not just the typical swimsuit stuff. That day it got hot out, like really hot out. At one point, I was shooting and I threw a swimsuit on just to be with everyone, the wine-red one-piece.”

Click ahead to see her photographs.