The Ultimate Bikini Bash

For South Florida’s foodies, there’s the South Beach Wine & Food Festival. Dade County art-aholics get to fawn all over themselves at Art Basel. The film-o-philes of the three-oh-five spend a couple of weeks each year inside the dark arthouses of the Miami International Film Festival. So what do the rest of us pervs who just want to look at chicks in bikinis get? Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Swim, of course. Kicking off Thursday and running through Monday, the annual festival of beach- and poolside fashion flaunts the finest bathing suit designs on some of the finest ladies to grace the runways of South Beach. Most shows take place at the Raleigh (1775 Collins Ave., Miami Beach) and are restricted to fashion industry types who wear sunglasses indoors and regularly use words like haute and draping. Still, lowly commoners who merely wish to gaze upon scantily clad hotties have plenty of opportunities to do just that. There’s the Lila Nikole Collection featuring at Bamboo Miami (550 Washington Ave., Miami Beach) on Friday, for example, featuring Ultra Music Festival-inspired swimwear modeled by the Miami Dolphins cheerleaders. Sunday brings L*Space’s open fashion show at the Perry (2377 Collins Ave., Miami Beach), and the whole event wraps up with a closing party at Haven (1237 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach), where mere mortals can mingle with the mad-sexy models they’ve been ogling all weekend.
July 19-23, 2012