What do you wear for your first trip to space?
If you are like most people, probably whatever spacesuit or astronaut outfit the company (or government agency) you are flying with provides. However, if you are Lauren Sánchez — journalist, pilot, children’s book author, philanthropist and fiancée of Jess Bezos — the second-richest man on the planet, you have another idea. You think, “Let’s reimagine the flight suit.”
“Usually, you know, these suits are made for a man,” Ms. Sánchez said recently on a video call from the West Coast. “Then they get tailored to fit a woman.” Or not tailored: an all-female spacewalk, planned in 2019, had to be canceled because NASA did not have two spacesuits that fit two women. (Instead they sent out one woman and one man.)
But Ms. Sánchez is part of the first all-female flight since Russia sent Valentina Tereshkova on a solo flight in 1963. She will be going up on a Blue Origin flight with a pop star (Katy Perry), a journalist (Gayle King), two scientist/activists (Amanda Nguyen, Aisha Bowe) and a film producer (Kerianne Flynn). Feeling like yourself is what makes you feel powerful, she 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, rather than a full-fledged astronaut.
So five months ago, Ms. Sánchez got in touch with Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim, the co-founders of the brand Monse, who are also creative directors of Oscar de la Renta (Mr. Garcia and Ms. Kim made Ms Sánchez’s 2024 Met Gala outfit). She wanted to know if they would work with Blue Origin, Mr. Bezos’ space company.
“I was like: right away!” Mr. Garcia said over Zoom.
The result of their collaboration will be unveiled on Monday, when Ms. Sánchez and crew climb into the Blue Origin rocket in West Texas, and take off for their approximately 11-minute trip past the Kármán line and into zero gravity.
“I think the suits are elegant,” Ms. Sánchez said, “but they also bring a little spice to space.”
When Gayle King tried hers on, she said, she loved it. She thought the suits looked “professional and feminine at the same time.”
Which, 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 Elvis wore in his Vegas years (on the bottom) and are made of a flame-resistant stretch neoprene, rather than the shiny polyester-looking fabric of the original, baggier, Blue Origin suits, as modeled by Mr. Bezos on a flight in 2021. (Ms. Sánchez helped design those suits as well.)
Still, “We really didn’t know where to start,” Mr. Garcia said. “There’s no precedent. All the references are men’s spacesuits.”
Because Blue Origin fliers do not go out into space, Mr. Garcia and Ms. 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,” Mr. Garcia said. “But we also wanted something that was a little dangerous, like a motocross outfit. Or a ski suit. Flattering and sexy.”
Ms. Kim added: “I, personally, would want to look very slim and fitted in my outfit.”
They batted ideas back and forth with Ms. Sánchez. “We even had a meeting on what underwear Lauren is going to wear,” Mr. Garcia said.
“Skims!” Ms. Sánchez responded.
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 can create a flared effect according to their own taste. “You’ll be able to zip or unzip,” Mr. Garcia said. (Ms. King said she liked the bell-bottom idea.)
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, Ms. Kim said. Every crew member was three-D body-scanned so the suits could be made exactly to their measurements.
“I almost put a corset in your suit, because I know you wouldn’t have been against it,” Mr. Garcia said to Ms. Sánchez.
“I probably wouldn’t have,” she said. But “we’re going to be in zero gravity. So we have to be able to move.” When Ms. Sánchez first tried the prototype on, she said, “I was stretching. I was doing a back bend. I was like, ‘OK, let’s make sure it doesn’t split up the back in space.’”
Mr. Garcia said when he saw the suit on he thought, “Damn, you look good. You’re going up in space looking hot.”
Amanda 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.”
Blue Origin is not the first private space company to enlist a fashion brand for help in outfit design. Axiom Space has also been working with Prada on their Extravehicular Mobility Unit spacesuit, otherwise known as the suit that NASA’s astronauts will wear when they walk on the moon during the Artemis III mission in 2026 (prototypes were revealed last October). Similarly, Elon Musk worked with the costume designer Jose Fernandez, the man behind the ‘fits of “The Fantastic Four” and “The Avengers,” on the SpaceX suits.
As to why fashion designers were suddenly so popular with the astrophysics set, Mr. Garcia said, “if we make suits look approachable and like something anyone could wear, then space might feel a little bit less distant.” Maybe, Mr. 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 went on, he and Ms. Kim were thinking they might “set up an office on Mars.” In both cases, he was joking. Sort of.
It turned out Mr. Garcia, Ms. Kim and Ms. 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 for the Artemis V mission to the Moon, but Ms. Sánchez 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 gets to choose.
Then she quoted something she said Katy Perry had told her: “We’re putting the ‘ass’ in astronaut,” she said.
