Rhiannon Morgan has some of the best advice on how to choose a competition bikini, including: choosing the right color, dark vs light colors, custom made vs pre-made bikinis, choosing the right cut, molded cup vs drawstring, matching your connectors.
Today I will go over how to order a competition bikini.
Ordering a bikini is a very tough job. I'm about to order my 4th custom-made bikini this week.
I’m about eight weeks out from my competition which is when you want to start ordering because they take about four weeks to be made and then shipped over to you depending on where you get it made from and what company you choose to go with.
I'm in the process of doing that now and I thought I'd go over step by step what to do and a few little tips that I have picked up along the way. For example if the suit comes in and its a bit small and other ways to minimize the risk of ordering online.
The first major step is, do your research.
What you need to do is look at the current bikini pros and the lineup at Olympia. Just search ‘Bikini Olympia’ and then you’ll see photos that will give you an idea of what the top professionals wear.
You can probably see from these images straightaway that you don't see any bright suit colors and that's simply because you don't want anything to distract from the shape of your body.
If you're going to wear something like a bright yellow it's just going to be way too overpowering. It's also not going to look good with the tan, you have to be quite smart about it.
That’s why dark colors complement a tan quite well and also shape your body nicely and they don't distract from what the judges are actually judging you for.
They judge you for your body. Yes, everything does come into play, bikini, your hair, make-up and the whole package but primarily they're looking at your body. They're looking at your lines, they don't want to be distracted by a blinding bikini so that's why especially in the IFBB you'll never see any of the bright colors.
You've probably also heard that people say you should try and match your skin color and your hair color to the bikini that you're going to wear to see what compliments you best.
This is also a very good tip because you don't want to be having something that's going to wash you out. For example if you're quiet pale even though you've got a tan on you'll be able to tell because your tan won't be as dark as compared to someone else who might have a darker skin color than you.
So if your pale, you wouldn't go with a white color suit because it's not going to contrast on you well. It' going to wash you out a little bit and make everything a bit weaker, you're not gonna pop.
Look at the bikini pros, see what they wear. Purple is very very common color within brown haired girls.
You just have to do your research and make sure you pick a color that you like. Someone might tell you that you look great in this color but if you don't like that color there's no point because you're about to spend a lot of money and you want to like what you're wearing.
My first suit was a light blue color and because I'm quite pale I felt like light blue washed out. So the next year, I did a dark navy blue color which was much better, it suited me a lot more.
Then the last one, my third suit was in purple color which has been my favorite so far. I think that really really suited me.
Step 2: there are many different companies you can go with to get a competition bikini. You can either get one that's already pre-made but it's not going to be custom to the dimensions of your body, which is really variable, especially when you have to order so far out from a comp date.
You have to allow for your body to get leaner but also you have to allow a little bit of space for adjustments if needed.
What I recommend is to go one to two centimeters above what you usually would measure at and then generally it'll fit fine and it won’t be too small because I've had that happen before. That's why I would recommend doing custom, just to make sure that it's going to fit the dimensions of your body.
There are many companies but not many in New Zealand. I think there might be one but I'm not sure. I've never ordered from a New Zealand company before, I have always got my suit custom made overseas and they’ve shipped it over.
You are looking at a range of pricing depending on different companies so you have to shop around. The prices are actually relatively the same for each level, similar designs.
You can get plain ones, you can get one with less crystals, more crystals or with full crystals.
That brings me to step 3: which is choosing all the custom options if you go down that road.
The first thing you would have decided is your color, that is going to be the base of your bikini. Now when you go into the colors you'll see there's a whole range of different colors and different shades of each color.
So if you pick purple there's going to be multiple shades of purple, from light to dark. You're gonna have some shattered glass material which is more shimmery effect, some that are plain and others that have sequins.
There's a whole lot of options but you don't have to worry too much if you're going to go with full crystal work because that covers all of the base anyway so you don't see much.
However, if you're gonna chose to go with less crystals on the bikini anything you do need to focus on the base color because it's gonna show through more.
Once the color is chosen then you go and decide how many gems you want and that's depending on how much you want to spend on a bikini.
They can range from a base with nothing on it for $200 all the way up to $1000 depending on what type of crystal you use.
With the gems, it's tricky because when you see them in normal light they're going to look very different than seeing it under stage lights.
This is an image of me, you can see the one in the normal light is a lot darker than the one in the stage light and that's just because the base is showing a bit more where as the light picks up on the gems.
I chose a shattered effect for this one so that means I had four different colored stones which all pick up on different light. You can see the color of the base when you turn the suit, it's dark purple but when you turn it around to the front, you can see that it's fully decorated and you don't really see the base fabric at all.
There are four shade of crystal colors, light, dark and then a bit more of a blue toned. That's why when I was on stage it showed that it was quite light, it was picking up on those stage lights.
I took a screenshot of each crystal that I liked and then I put them into a sequence to see what they look like together as a whole.
Then you also want to choose the cut of your bikini because there are multiple options and it depends on the Federation you’re competing in.
This is what you need your bikini to look like, you want 50% coverage and you have to be really careful because a lot of companies make them quite small.
You can see on my bottom here, this is how much coverage you want. Mine is 50% of the glutes, it doesn't look like much coverage on here that is because it’s scrunched a bit so when you put it on it will stretch.
For the top, I think this is called Sweetheart shape and it's molded cups. They have cups in here and it’s solid.
These are not the adjustable drawstring where you can see the scrunch a bit at the base of the cup. That's what girls with the natural boobs wear, it's easier for them to push them up and adjust to where it goes.
That was the first one I got and then when I did get my boobs done I changed to molded cup because it holds it in way better. It's not going to have anything pop under the bottom of the cup.
This molded cup also has padding in it and it is removable. Even when you do have your boobs done it still just pushes them up a bit more so I'll probably get that in my next one too.
Then you have to choose the connectors. There's heaps of different ones you can choose from.
These are the ones I went with last time and I love them but I also like the single line connectors. It's really up to you but you don't want to get the drape ones because that covers your glutes. You'll see the pro lineup, they all have really small, thin straps.
Same goes for the bottom part you want to match it to your top, you don't want two different ones because it looks a bit odd.
That's the basics of ordering a competition bikini. Just watch out for size and make sure you've got enough time from when you order it. Try and order about eight weeks out depending on how long the company takes to ship the suit.
Also make sure you've got enough money aside depending on what you want to do with it.
You can also always put the gems on yourself if you really want to. It does take a lot longer but if you want to save some money you can do it that way too.
I hope this video was helpful for anyone who wanted to know how to order a competition bikini for the first time or just had some queries about ordering a custom one.
That's it for now, I hope you enjoyed this video and I will see you in the next one. Bye!
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