Blue Origin's all-women flight Bringing a little spice to space

Amazon boss Jeff Bezos' fiancee Lauren Sanchez teamed up with US fashion label Monse to design the spacesuits

- Vanessa Friedman

NEW YORK - What do you wear for your first trip to space? If you are like most people, probably whatever spacesuit or astronaut outfit provided by the company or government agency you are flying with.

However, if you are Lauren Sanchez - American journalist, pilot, children's book author, philanthropist and fiancee of Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, the second-richest man on the planet - you have another idea.

You think: "Let's reimagine the flight suit."

"Usually, these suits are made for a man," Sanchez said recently on a video call. "Then they get tailored to fit a woman." Or not tailored: An all-female spacewalk, planned in 2019, had to be cancelled because the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) did not have two spacesuits that fit two women. Instead, it sent out one woman and one man.

But Sanchez, 55, was part of the first all-female flight since Russia sent Ms Valentina Tereshkova on a solo flight in 1963.

She went up on a Blue Origin flight with a pop star (Katy Perry), a journalist (Gayle King), two scientist-activists (Amanda Nguyen and Aisha Bowe) and a film producer (Kerianne Flynn).

Feeling like yourself is what makes you feel powerful, Sanchez said, and you should not 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 Sanchez got in touch with Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim, co-founders of American fashion brand Monse, who are also creative directors at US-headquartered fashion house Oscar de la Renta. Garcia and Kim made Sanchez's 2024 Met Gala outfit.