NEW YORK – What do you wear for your first trip to space? If you are like most people, probably whatever spacesuit or astronaut outfit provided by the company or government agency you are flying with.
However, if you are Lauren Sanchez – American journalist, pilot, children’s book author, philanthropist and fiancee of Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, the second-richest man on the planet – you have another idea.
You think: “Let’s reimagine the flight suit.”
“Usually, these suits are made for a man,” Sanchez said recently on a video call. “Then they get tailored to fit a woman.” Or not tailored: An all-female spacewalk, planned in 2019, had to be cancelled because the National Aeronautics and Space Administration(Nasa) did not have two spacesuits that fit two women. Instead, it sent out one woman and one man.
But Sanchez, 55, was part of the first all-female flight since Russia sent Ms Valentina Tereshkova on a solo flight in 1963.
She went up on a Blue Origin flight with a pop star (Katy Perry), a journalist (Gayle King), two scientist-activists (Amanda Nguyen and Aisha Bowe) and a film producer (Kerianne Flynn).
Feeling like yourself is what makes you feel powerful, Sanchez said, and you should not have to sacrifice that because space has been – well, a mostly male space. Even if you are a space tourist, rather than a full-fledged astronaut.
So, five months ago, Sanchez got in touch with Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim, co-founders of American fashion brand Monse, who are also creative directors at US-headquartered fashion house Oscar de la Renta. Garcia and Kim made Sanchez’s 2024 Met Gala outfit.
She wanted to know if they would work with Blue Origin, Bezos’ space company. Garcia said over Zoom: “I was like: Right away!”
The result of their collaboration was unveiled on April 14, when Sanchez and crew climbed into the Blue Origin rocket in West Texas, and took off for their approximately 11-minute trip past the Karman line and into zero gravity.
“I think the suits are elegant,” Sanchez said, “but they also bring a little spice to space.”
When King, 70, tried hers on, she loved it. She thought the suits looked “professional and feminine at the same time”.
This, when it came to space, happened to be “something we had never seen before”, she said.
The Monse Blue Origin suits, which were produced by Creative Character Engineering, look like a cross between Star Trek (on top) and the outfits the King of Rock ’n’ Roll Elvis Presley wore in his Vegas years (on the bottom). They are made of a flame-resistant stretch neoprene, rather than the shiny polyester-looking fabric of the original, baggier Blue Origin suits, as modelled by Bezos on a flight in 2021. Sanchez helped design those suits as well.
Still, “we really didn’t know where to start”, Garcia said. “There’s no precedent. All the references are men’s spacesuits.”
Because Blue Origin fliers do not go out into space, Garcia and Kim did not need to incorporate the life-support system of the classic astronaut suit, but they still had to work within technical specifications.
“Simplicity was important, and comfort and fit,” Garcia said. “But we also wanted something that was a little dangerous, like a motocross outfit. Or a ski suit. Flattering and sexy.”
Kim added: “I, personally, would want to look very slim and fitted in my outfit.”
They batted ideas back and forth with Sanchez. “We even had a meeting on what underwear Lauren was going to wear,” Garcia said.
“Skims,” Sanchez responded, referring to the shapewear and clothing brand co-founded by American reality television star Kim Kardashian.
The result is a body-con jumpsuit, with a compression layer, a slight mandarin collar, a dual-zip front that can look like it is open to the waist, a belt and a zipper on the side of each calf, so the wearer could create a flared effect according to her own taste.
The suits also feature a darker, ombre effect on the sides that works to shade the body, almost like trompe l’oeil. There are small pockets on the arms, but leg pockets were dropped because they were too bulky, Kim said. Every crew member was 3D body-scanned so the suits could be made exactly to their measurements.
Nguyen called the suits “revolutionary”. Clothes are about identity and representation, she said, and by allowing women to look like women, the suits are a statement that “women belong in space”.
As to why fashion designers were suddenly so popular with the astrophysics set, Garcia said: “If we make suits look approachable and like something anyone could wear, then space might feel a little bit less distant.”
Maybe, Garcia said, when people saw the Monse Blue Origin style, they might even think they “want to buy that spacesuit to go to the gym”. In fact, he added, he and Kim were thinking they might “set up an office on Mars”.
In both cases, he was joking. Sort of.
It turned out that Garcia, Kim and Sanchez were already working on something else for Blue Origin, related to “the moon”. Blue Origin has been selected by Nasa to develop the human landing system for the Artemis V mission to the moon, but Sanchez would not say if Monse would have anything to do with that.
She was, however, excited to give space travel a new look.
“This isn’t what you would call ‘normal’, but neither is sending six women into space,” she said. “If you want to do glam, great. If you don’t, great.” The point was everyone got to choose.
Then Sanchez quoted something she said Perry, 40, had told her: “We’re putting the ‘a**’ in astronaut.” NYTIMES
Blue Origin crew including singer Katy Perry back safely after space launch SpaceX loses starship rocket carrying dummy satellites
JoinST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
StyleFashion designersJeff BezosSpace and cosmosCelebrities
