In its annual Swimsuit Issue 10 years before, Sports Illustrated first presented spectacular photographs of models in swimsuits that consisted of nothing more than paint artistically and painstakingly applied to their bodies. These eye-popping optical illusions, created by make-up artist Joanne Gair and captured by the magazine's world-class photographers, have become a favourite feature of this widely popular magazine. Now the editors bring together not just a complete collection of astonishing painted-swimsuit photographs, but also a series of entertaining essays, stories and columns that trace the history of body painting and take readers behind the scenes of the Swimsuit shoots where this modern and provocative artistic technique reached a large audience. Joanne Gair is a renowned body-painting artist whose work helped popularize painted fashion illusions in editorial photography, while the magazine's photographers contributed to documenting this technique in a distinctive visual style that influenced fashion and media imagery.