Ground control to Miuccia Prada: when space and fashion collide
Prada is designing space suits, but it’s not the first fashion house to reimagine the uniform
In 2025 Nasa astronauts will be stepping on to the moon in something a little more stylish than the average spacesuit. Prada has recently announced that it will be working with Axiom Space to design suits for the first crewed lunar landing since 1972. This mission, Artemis III, will also include the first woman to set foot on the moon.
Axiom Space, founded in 2016, develops infrastructure for space missions. So far it has run two fully private trips to the International Space Station, with another planned, for $55 million each (15 weeks of astronaut training included). As well as starting work on the first commercial space station, the company has now turned its attention to what astronauts wear in space.
Spacesuits are of course, first and foremost, functional items, subject to factors such as zero gravity, extreme low temperatures and high cosmic radiation. However, by focusing on the person wearing the suit, as well as the environment in which it will be worn, Axiom and Prada hope to offer greater mobility and enhanced protection, as well as the possibility for the suit to be more adapted to different body shapes and sizes. Prada will add “technical expertise with raw materials, manufacturing techniques and innovative design concepts”, says Michael Suffredini, the CEO of Axiom Space.
Space travel is to the 21st century what air travel was to the 20th — a new frontier of technology and opportunity. As air travel opened up to wider audiences after the Second World War, companies looked for new ways to communicate both brand identity and the level of innovation and luxury travellers were being offered. One way to do this was through uniforms. The inauguration of commercial flights on Concorde in 1976 led to Air France asking the fashion house Jean Patou to design a new uniform. The result was a remarkably relaxed — and very Seventies — white and navy striped number. Somewhat unsurprisingly, as the national carrier of a country known as the epitome of chic, Air France had long worked with some of the biggest names in fashion to design its uniforms. In 1963 Marc Bohan, the head designer for Christian Dior, produced a chic suit for stewardesses in Marceau blue, complete with matching pillbox hat, an ensemble that would not have looked out of place on Jackie Kennedy. At the end of the Sixties, the company asked Cristobal Balenciaga, the innovative Spanish couturier, to take its staff into the new decade.
Meanwhile, in the Seventies, rival French airline UTA turned to Pierre Cardin and André Courrèges to bring their trademark futuristic flair to the flight crew’s outfits. Cardin applied his interest in texture and shape to the stewardesses’ dresses, making round pockets a design feature. UTA wasn’t Cardin’s first foray into the airline industry, though. In 1966 he’d designed uniforms composed of a long-line tunic over fitted trousers, accompanied by a dupatta, for Pakistan International Airlines. In the late Sixties he also created minidresses and statement capes in white and Aegean blue for Aristotle Onassis’s Olympic Airways. Cardin had taken over the role at Olympic from none other than Coco Chanel.
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Since the closure of his fashion house due to financial difficulties, Christian Lacroix is a designer who has made something of a habit of uniform collaborations. As well as designing the latest iteration of Air France’s uniform in 2005, Lacroix produced looks for China Eastern in 2013, and has also worked with SNCF, the French national train operator.
Uniforms for the commercial transport industry often share many features with military outfits. The Second World War saw the input of fashion designers into military uniforms, particularly those needed to outfit the large number of new female recruits. In 1942 the US army’s Office of the Quartermaster General asked Dorothy Shaver from the US department chain Lord & Taylor to advise on just this issue. She introduced an innovative wrap dress for army nurses, as well as trousers for female soldiers in certain units. Shaver also recruited her own squad of well-known designers to create specific designs. Mainbocher, the American-born couturier who had recently relocated from Paris to New York, designed a neat, functional but chic uniform for the Waves (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, part of the US navy), the shape of which subtly foreshadows the legendary Bar suit, which would be introduced by Christian Dior in 1947. Mainbocher went on to design or redesign uniforms for the American Red Cross, the Girl Scouts and the Women Marines.
In the UK, Norman Hartnell, a favourite designer of Queen Elizabeth II, designed female uniforms for the British Army during the Second World War. He created nurses’ uniforms during the early years of the NHS and would later expand his repertoire to include uniforms for female police officers, complete with swishy capes and dramatic caps. These were, sadly, rather impractical for the day-to-day business of policing, but they certainly looked very dashing
A uniform may be synonymous with conformity and function, but what a fashion designer can add is a modicum of subversion and flair, just not too much.
