Sailor Brinkley Cook channels mom Christie Brinkley’s iconic Cosmopolitan bikini cover — nearly 50 years later

The Brinkley bikini legacy lives on.

Sailor Brinkley Cook channeled her supermodel mom Christie Brinkley’s legendary June 1977 Cosmopolitan cover this week when she shared a series of sun-soaked photos from her Turks and Caicos vacation on Instagram.

In the shots, Brinkley Cook posed in a cobalt blue string bikini with a triangle top and skimpy bottoms featuring straps that wrapped around her hips.

The look was a modern echo of the iridescent purple high-cut Norma Kamali bikini that helped make Christie, now 71, an icon nearly 50 years ago.

That groundbreaking Cosmo cover remains one of Christie’s most memorable moments. In a 2016 Instagram post, the supermodel recalled the moment she first laid eyes on the suit, which was held together with a single string.

“I remember the day Francesco Scavullo’s trusted stylist, Sean, handed me a little pile of string and asked me to put it on!” she wrote. “I looked it over and started to laugh as I struggled to find the right way to do that! We had never seen anything like it before.”

Christie described the high-cut style as “groundbreaking, racy, sexy, scandalous,” adding, “I LOVED IT!”

“In 1977, this bathing suit caused a stir!” Christie wrote in a 2020 Instagram post. “At the time, all the bikinis were low-slung on the hip. This high leg cut made the hip a new erogenous zone.”

She admitted the shoot wasn’t all confidence, however.

Without modern photo technology, the team had to nail every detail before they got the shot. “They did not have retouching back then, so they really perfected the makeup and every strand of hair,” she recalled. “I remember I was worried that I looked fat.”

Today, however, she has a personal hype squad right at home. Earlier this month, she posted a series of bikini selfies from the same family beach getaway.

Sailor was among the first to comment on her mom’s post. “Hot bod alert,” she gushed.

On Wednesday, Brinkley Cook shared a second series of vacation photos with the caption “Mentally still here 🌺💭.” In those shots, she lounged poolside in a bright turquoise bikini against a lush backdrop of pink and red tropical flowers.

Christie welcomed Sailor in 1998 with ex-husband Peter Cook. She’s also mom to daughter Alexa Ray Joel, 40, with ex Billy Joel, and son Jack Brinkley-Cook, 30, with ex Richard Taubman.