This week was marked by two extra-atmospheric events: on Wednesday, astronomers detected what is, per the New York Times, “the strongest indication yet of extraterrestrial life” on a planet known as K2-18b orbiting a star 120 light-years from Earth. Very cool! And Monday, as you’ve surely seen by now, blasted-off with a literal rocket launch: the instantly viral Blue Origin mission featuring Katy Perry, Gayle King and Jeff Bezos’s betrothed Lauren Sánchez, together with activist Amanda Nguyen, ex-NASA engineer Aisha Bowe and film producer Kerianne Flynn.
The entire thing — which lasted around 11 minutes — inspired memes, thinkpieces and lots of online discourse. And as with most things in the orbit of female celebrities, the fashion component of the proceedings became newsworthy. But who will they wear to space?
It’s a valid enough question. In 2019, NASA had to update a planned all-female spacewalk to feature one man and one woman because it did not have enough spacesuits for two women. Except that Perry et al. were not wearing astronaut garb, but snazzy, figure-hugging blue and black catsuits that were somewhat reminiscent of Sue Storm’s Fantastic Four uniform. They were designed by the media-savvy founders of Monse, Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim, who also currently design for Oscar de la Renta and have dressed Sanchez in the past.
For most, the billions spent on the space jaunt raised an eyebrow: are we really making space tourism a thing? In this economy? And while the style component is now somewhat of a footnote in the whole thing, its involvement does pose a tantalising question: does fashion belong in space?
Many years ago, in the early stages of the first Trump administration, Karl Lagerfeld staged his Autumn/Winter 2017 runway presentation for Chanel around a life-size rocket in the middle of the Grand Palais in Paris. There was a countdown, a liftoff, and Elton John’s “Rocket Man” closed the show. The whole thing is fondly remembered by most of the fashion community as a peak in Lagerfeld’s monumental tenure at the label, the epitome of fashion’s ability to contextualise and materialise our collective dreams and fantasies — “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” and all — even while addressing our general mood. (The show was, in part, inspired by some NASA discoveries from the time, combined with an appetite for escapism and inklings of a renewed Cold War.)
Space travel for the everyman seemed entirely fantastical then. It seems that now that it’s not as far-fetched, in a present-day where pop stars and TV personalities go to space, the idea is within grasp and therefore subjected to the perils of realism and our current reality. Could space tourism become an actual industry? If so, it’s not far-fetched to imagine that luxury brands would follow.
At the time, one could have been delighted to imagine that someday Lagerfeld, or an industrious designer of his ilk, would take a giant leap for fashion and host the first-ever fashion show in space. We have since collectively grown more critical; we question more of what’s put in front of us, in many cases to positive collective reflection, but in some others to belaboured online “discourse” that only makes us all grow more anxious, fearful and jaded. This has led to an abundance of questions, ranging from pragmatic to existential: who is making our clothes and where? Why are brands raising prices? Why do we place such value on “luxury”, and is the quality actually worth the cost? Why should anyone care?
If our mindset were the same today as it was eight years ago when Lagerfeld staged that show, we’d be placing bets as to who the first designers in space could be. We’d be wondering if Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant of Coperni, who once made their signature Swipe bag out of a meteorite, could stage a show at the International Space Station. My guess is that they’ll likely start with one inside of those amusing zero-gravity simulators.
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Monse has now broken through the atmosphere, but Prada has a head start when it comes to landing on the Moon. NASA announced in October 2023 that the first women and the first person of colour to ever land on the moon would be wearing Prada, a spacesuit co-designed by the label and Axiom Space. Prada’s involvement was technical and specifically focused on the equipment’s outer-layer design and materialisation. A worthwhile reminder that fashion has utility past aesthetics, and that it can engage with space in a myriad of ways. The suit will be employed as part of the Artemis III mission, whose primary objective is the first human lunar landing since Apollo 17 back in 1972. The space suit unveiled last year had no visible Prada logos other than a faint reference to the language in its Linea Rossa line — the kind of thing only true fashion connoisseurs will be able to spot.
Perhaps that’s the way in for fashion – is stealth anti-gravity wealth the new quiet luxury? Could one of The Row’s famously intimate shows be once held in the stratosphere? They don’t allow phones already, so posting live on Instagram would not be an issue.
Perhaps it will be Matthieu Blazy, who has taken on the Chanel mantle, who will make use of that double C-branded rocket or trade it for the real thing. Given his bio-futuristic last collection, Plato’s Atlantis, I can imagine Lee Alexander McQueen could have engaged with the idea of taking his collection to outer space if the circumstances were right. That show was an apocalyptic forecast of a future (and now more real than ever) ecological meltdown – he envisioned humankind as creatures that evolved from the sea who would be heading back underwater once global warming completely melts the ice cap. I could see Rick Owens, with his future-brutalist aesthetic, as one who’d be able to take this challenge head on with the same kind of awareness and considerations.
For now, the industry is more focused on what’s happening here on Earth as tariffs and a global trade war throw planning into disarray. But it’s worth reminding ourselves that fashion can engage with science and technology in meaningful ways – not just to sell stuff.
After all, fashion, at its best, is exploratory and expansive. It represents possibility: who we can be, where we could go. It engages with technology and culture in ways that are not disconnected from our reality but illustrative of it. It is a tool for us to employ in our reflections rather than the very thing to question. Who knows if there is life out there, on the planet K2-18b or elsewhere, and if so, what it looks like. For all we know, the first fashion show in space has already happened.
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