Space exploration inspiration for fashion styling and design in six decades since 1960: A review

Abstract

Launch date of the first artificial satellite Sputnik 1 was on October 4, 1957, therefore it was commonly considered to be the starting year of the space age. Being inspired by the rapid developments in space and universe explorations, André Courrèges, Pierre Cardin and many other designers opened the frontier territory of the space-age era in the fashion community. From 1964, André Courrèges extensively used the white and silver metallic colours which soon became the definition of aesthetics at that time and was named Godfather of the space-age designer. On the other hand, Pierre Cardin demonstrated his early space-age work at the Paris Fashion Week in 1968 and was called the pioneer of the space-age fashion designer. For the six decades up to now, at least 15 fashion designers launched the so-called “Fashion communities’ interplanetary mission” in different years: André Courrèges (1964), Mary Quant (1965), Reed Crawford (1966, specialized in hat design), Pierre Cardin (1968), Paco Rabanne (1968), Thierry Mugler (1979), Issey Miyake (1995), Alexander McQueen (1995), Nicolas Ghesquière (2007), Hussein Chalayan (2007), Christopher Kane (2011), Raf Simons (2014), Donatella Versace (2016), Karl Lagerfeld (2017), Nicolas Ghesquière (second time in 2019, as the artistic director of Louis Vuitton) and Iris Van Herpen (2019). The purpose of this paper is to systematically and methodically review the inspiration and significant influence of space exploration and universe discovery on the fashion aesthetics, styling and design in six decades from 1960 to the current year. Major creative ideas included new colours such as silver, new materials such as metallic, new styling such as flying saucer, new patterns such as totems, and the use of new technologies such as 3-dimensional (3D) printing, with the most important considerations of noble, elegancy and aesthetics. Also, the feedback influence of the space-age fashion on the new generation SpaceX and Boeing suits is discussed.