Your space suit, your way

What do you put for your first trip to space?

If you are like most people, probably any space or astronaut suit that the company (or government agency) provides you with which you fly. However, if you are Lauren Sánchez – periodist, pilot, author of Children’s Books, Philanthropic and Promised of Jeff Bezos, the second richest man on the planet – you can think of another idea. You think: “We are going to reimagine the flight suit.”

“You know, normally these costumes are made for a man,” Sanchez said recently in a video call from the west coast. “Then they adapt to a woman.” Or do not adapt: ​​an exclusively female space walk, scheduled for 2019, had to cancel because NASA did not have two space costumes that would have two women. (Instead, they sent a woman and a man).

But Sanchez is part of the first exclusively female flight since Russia sent Valentina Tereshkova on a solo flight in 1963. He will go up to a Blue Origin flight with a pop star (Katy Perry), a journalist (Gayle King), two scientists/activists (Amanda Nguyen, Aisha Bowe) and a film producer (Kerianne Flynn). Feeling yourself is what makes you feel powerful, he said, and you shouldn’t have to sacrifice that because space has been … Well, a mostly male space. Even if you are a space tourist, instead of an astronaut made and right.

So five months ago, Sánchez contacted Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim, co -founders of the Monse brand, who are also creative directors of Oscar de la Renta (Garcia and Kim made the attire of the Gala del Met 2024 of Sánchez). I wanted to know if they would work with Blue Origin, the Bezos Space Company.

“My reaction was: immediately!” Garcia said by Zoom.

The result of your collaboration will be revealed on Monday, when Sánchez and the crew rise to the Blue Origin rocket in western Texas, and take off for your trip of approximately 11 minutes beyond the karm line and towards zero gravity.

“I think the costumes are elegant,” said Sánchez, “but they also give a spicy touch to space.”

When Gayle King tried his, he said, he loved it. He thought the costumes seemed “professionals and feminine at the same time.”

Which, in the face of space, it turned out to be “something we had never seen before,” he said.

Mons Blue Origin costumes, manufactured by Creative Character Engineering, seem like a cross between Star Trek (On the top) and the costumes that Elvis carried in its Las Vegas years (at the bottom), and are made of fire resistant elastic neoprene, instead of the bright fabric with the appearance of polyester of the original Blue Origin costumes, more comfortable, as the Bezos lució in a flight in 2021. (Sánchez also helped to design those costumes).

Even so, “we really didn’t know where to start,” Garcia said. “There are no precedents. All references are male space costumes.”

As Blue Origin aviators do not go to space, Garcia and Kim did not need to incorporate the vital support system of the classic astronaut suit, but they still had to work within the technical specifications.

“Simplicity was important, as well as comfort and adjustment,” Garcia said. “But we also wanted something that was a bit dangerous, like a motorcycle suit. Or a ski suit. Flattering and sexy.”

Kim added: “Personally, I would like to have a very slender appearance and fit with my suit.”

They exchanged ideas with Sánchez. “We even had a meeting on what underwear Lauren is going,” said Garcia.

“Something skimsy!” Sánchez replied.

The result is an entire body monkey, with a compression layer, a slight mandarin neck, a double zip front that may seem open to the waist, a belt and a zipper on the side of each calf, so that the user can create a camping effect to her taste. “You can upload or lower the zipper,” said Garcia. (King said he liked the idea of ​​bell pants).

The costumes also have a darker degraded effect on the sides that serve to shade the body, almost like a trapTojo. There are small pockets in the arms, but those of the legs were suppressed because they bulge too much, Kim said. Each crew member was made a three -dimensional body scanner to be able to make the suits exactly to measure.

“I was about to wear a corset in the suit, because I know you would not have been opposite,” Garcia told Sánchez.

“I would probably not have done it,” she said. But “we are going to be in zero gravity. So we have to be able to move.” When Sánchez tried the prototype for the first time, he said: “I stretched me. I was doing a back flexion. I told myself: ‘Ok, we will make sure that it did not open behind in space.'”

Garcia said that when he saw the suit placed: “Devils, how good you are. You’re going to space seeing you sexy.”

Amanda Nguyen described the “revolutionaries.” Clothing has to do with identity and representation, he said, and by allowing women to look like women, costumes are a statement that “women belong to space.”

Blue Origin is not the first private space company that resorts to a fashion brand to help you design your costumes. Axiom Space has also worked with Prada in its space suit for the extravehicular mobility unit, also known as the suit that NASA astronauts will wear when they step on the moon during the Artemis III mission in 2026 (the prototypes were revealed last October). Similarly, Elon Musk worked with costume designer Jose Fernandez, responsible for the costumes of The fantastic 4 and The Avengersin Spacex’s suits.

As for why fashion designers were suddenly popular among the circle of astrophysics, Garcia said: “If we make the costumes seem accessible and as something that anyone could wear, then the space might seem a little less distant.” Perhaps, Garcia said, when people saw Blue Origin’s Mons style, he even thought “I would like to buy that space suit to go to the gym.”

In fact, he continued, he and Kim were thinking that they could “set up an office on Mars.” In both cases, I was joking. More or less.

It turned out that Garcia, Kim and Sánchez 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 of the Artemis V mission to the moon, but Sanchez did not mean if Mons would have something to do with that.

However, she was excited to give her a new look to space trips.

“This is not what we would call ‘normal’, but it is not to send six women to space,” he said. “If you want to make it glamorous, great; if not, great.” The question was that everyone can choose.

Then he cited something that said Katy Perry had said: “We are putting the ‘Ass’ (rear, in English) in ‘Astronaut’,” he said.

Vanessa Friedman She has been the Fashion Director and the Fashion Chief Criticism of the Times since 2014.