When traditional fabrics were used, they were often manipulated to invoke unusual textures. Other space age designers included synthetic fabrics such as nylon, corfam, lurex, and spandex, as well as other non-cloth materials like PVC, paper, aluminum, and polyester. His first show in 1966 was rather aptly titled “Twelve Unwearable Dresses in Contemporary Materials” and featured the first of his now emblematic metal-linked dresses. Rabanne altogether avoided traditional fabrics in favor of plastics and metals strung together with wire and fastened with glue. As absurd as that sounds, it’s kind of perfect. Rabanne, on a much more curious front, claimed that in one of his past lives he had traveled to Earth from a planet called Altair to organize civilization on our planet 78,000 years ago. Also infatuated with space travel, Pierre Cardin visited NASA and tried on the space suit worn on the moon by Neil Armstrong. André Courrèges was so incredibly devoted to the future of space travel that he was personally invited by NASA to visit Cape Canaveral. Designers took inspiration from things as real as the revolutionary 1961 Soviet-crewed spaceflight Vostok 1 and as fictional as Forbidden Planet, Lost in Space, and Flight to Mars. The movement fed on fantasies of flying cars, unknown alien civilizations, and men stretching their legs on every moon and planet they could find. Hot on the heels of the Cold War and international Space Race, it found inspiration in the exploration of unimaginable futures and the immeasurable vastness of our universe. Though the space age movement technically began in the 1950s, it flourished in the ‘60s. Helmed by Paco Rabanne and Jacques Fonteray, Barbarella’s costume design serves to flawlessly encapsulate the invigorating aesthetics of the space age movement. The film’s moral revelations, however, have nothing on the boundless provocativity of its costume design, which practically invented molded body plates and chainmail dresses. Both Fonda and Vadim were emphatic that Barbarella had no sense of guilt about her body or bold sexuality. Barbarella (Jane Fonda) herself is a scantily clad space-traveler of the 41st century whose sexuality and freeness are impossible to measure against our contemporary morality. It cares more about sex politics than elevating what was a largely neglected genre because Vadim wanted a playful spectacle rather than a cerebral exercise. Wearing my clothes is a question of spirit.” Courrèges translated the 60s space-craze into clothing, and when at last in 1969, man landed on the moon, Courrèges celebrated with a range of mirror-disc stamped overalls, created in the White Salon at his Avenue Kléber studio.Roger Vadim’s 1968 space drama Barbarella takes kitschy sci-fi to an alternate dimension, one of campy eroticism. “I believe one can make women happier by bringing both more white and more colour into their lives,” Courrèges preached. His technical garments pioneered a new look that blended avant-garde geometry with sport classics, driven by the youthful energy that defined the decade, and are celebrated in a new book by Emmanuelle Dirix and Charlotte Fiell, considering fashion in the 70s. The French designer André Courrèges is best known for introducing the revolutionary Space Look – an intergalactic breed of dressing, featuring white boots, goggles and boxy dresses, designed in futuristic metallic shades, high-shine fabrics and PVC. Trends in the 1960s can be credited to a few sartorial pioneers: Mary Quant invented the mini-skirt, Jackie Kennedy popularised the pillbox hat, Yves Saint Laurent created the Le Smoking tuxedo.

1960s space age fashion