Retrospective of Air Canada uniforms marks the airline’s 75th anniversary,
Airline celebrates 75th year with look back on evolving uniforms
Air travel is hard enough without the distraction of too much style in the aisle. When it comes to flight attendant fashion, sense and stability will do. That was the reassuring impression left by a retrospective of uniforms presented last Friday at Pearson Airport by Air Canada. Part of an open-house event celebrating the airline’s 75th anniversary, the show opened with a beige gabardine jacket and skirt suit. Purchased at the Bay in 1938 by Lucile Garner Grant — the first “stewardess” hired by Trans-canada Air Lines, as Air Canada was formerly known — the outfit was not all that different from the navy ensemble of jacket and skirt by Canadian designer Debbie Shuchat that was introduced in the mid-2000s and is still worn. Over the years, many fashion designers have been enlisted to lend allure to the wardrobes of the world’s flight attendants: Mila Schon and Giorgio Armani for Alitalia; Yves Saint Laurent for Qantas; Anne Klein for United; Bill Blass for American; Pierre Balmain for Singapore Airlines; Adolfo Dominiguez for Iberia; Julien Macdonald for British Airways; Nina Ricci, Carven, Louis Féraud and Christian Lacroix for Air France; Kimberley Newport Mimran for Porter; Michel Robichaud and Leo Chevalier for Air Canada. Often these collaborations seemed to serve little purpose beyond giving companies something to boast about. But there have been some wild exceptions, none more outlandish than the getups that Emilio Pucci came up with for Braniff in1965. These included tunics and culottes in shades of lime green and apricot, patterned hose and go-go boots. On the Air Canada catwalk the most noticeable departures from dutiful design were the uniforms of 1968, which featured above-the-knee A-line dresses in red or blue. Such mod creations, of course, were in keeping with the madcap image of the stewardess that long held sway. In 1958, Life ran a cover photo of two smiling female flight attendants in smart suits and perky hats. The article within reported on the “Glamor Girls of the Air,” whose covetable careers brought them in contact with all sorts of interesting people, “mostly the kind of men who can afford to travel by plane.” The 1965 movie Boeing Boeing begins with four uniformed women disembarking while a voiceover proclaims air hostesses to be “these delectable creatures selected for their charm and beauty.” The era of flight attendant as globetrotting adventurers was recently revisited in the television series Pan Am— but those days have been left behind with improved hiring practices that have left ageism and sexism behind.
In the Air Canada retrospective fashion show, the men and women were dressed in spruce but serviceable clothes, appropriate for people with a job to do. Fortunately, for both them and their passengers, that job does not require keeping up with fashion’s latest flights of fancy.