Story

Space Age Fashion

colour photograph of a silver dress on a mannequin

From futuristic designs to unisex fashion

by
Marta Franceschini (opens in new window) (European Fashion Heritage Association)

The 1960s were a time of innovation and exploration. While science ventured into space with a series of missions culminating, in 1969, with the Apollo 11 touching ground on the Moon, fashion foresaw a broad cosmic future, experimenting with new technologies and fabrics, and introducing unisex silhouettes.

Predicting women's fashion in the year 2000, the ‘Space Age’ designers Pierre Cardin, André Courrèges, Paco Rabanne and Rudi Gernreich designed sleek, colour neutral silhouettes in plastic materials, accessorised with vinyl boots, helmets and plastic goggles. Though contemporary history shows that their prediction might not have been that accurate, their creations influenced fashion for the decades ahead.

colour photograph of white boots in a white box-frame with bright white neon lighting tubes behind it
colour photograph of five fashion outfits on mannequins in a silver elevator-like space

While the 'Space Age' is considered to start with the launch into space of Sputnik in 1957, the first artificial Earth satellite, the 'fashion Space Age' instead is a trend that originated on the Parisian catwalks in the early-1960s.

During this time, Italian-born fashion designer Pierre Cardin and French André Courrèges, off from their careers in French couture houses, decided to launch their futuristic lines. Alongside them, Paco Rabanne and Rudy Gernreich contributed to the construction of a defined imagery both with their fashion and costume designs, that include the iconic creations for 'Barbarella' (1968) by Rabanne and, later, 'Space: 1999' (1975-1977) by Gernreich.

colour photograph of a metallic blue tunic-like top made of connected square fabric pieces on a mannequin
colour photograph of a metallic blue dress with white bands across the torso, it is on a mannequin in a silver metallic space
colour photograph of black swimwear with a large belt on a mannequin

Inspired by the youthful wave that defined those years, these designers focused on the exploration of the new potentialities of dress, moving away from the past to look forward to a romanticised future.

In 1963, the ‘Cosmocorps’ collection by Pierre Cardin introduced new shapes and geometries, adopting in some cases the same cuts, colours and fabrics for the creations for both men and women. Similarly, since 1961, André Courrèges had infused in his modern collections a sense of gender neutrality, drawing elements from children's clothes.

colour photograph of a white tunic, black trousers, black sweater, black belt, black ankle boots on a mannequin
colour fashion illustration of a man's suit, with a black long-sleeve turtleneck, dark red or purple wool slipover and long black narrow-leg trousers

In addition, their shared characteristic of experimenting with new materials let their creations free of historical gender associations, paving the way to unisex fashion, which would take the fashion world by storm from the following decade.

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