The haute couture house develops “textiles resistant to extreme conditions”

Fashion house Pierre Cardin and ESA, the European Space Agency, have teamed up to create a chic spacesuit for training astronauts as they prepare to go to the Moon.

A haute couture space suit, designed by Pierre Cardin, has been created, the result of a rather unexpected partnership between the haute couture house and the European Space Agency ESA. learned France Inter on Tuesday, September 10. Originally, it was a dream of Pierre Cardin’s great-nephew, Rodrigo Basilicati-Cardin, now CEO of the company.

Rodrigo Basilicati-Cardin had in mind to work with the space industry, 50 years after the launch of the futuristic Cosmocorps collection. So last year, he took advantage of a fashion show in Kourou, French Guiana, to approach astronauts and talk to them about his project. A year later, the Cardin house put the finishing touches to its first prototype spacesuit. A suit intended to dress the astronauts’ spacesuits and which will be used in a brand new training center. This center, inaugurated at the end of the month in Germany, is intended to reproduce the atmospheric conditions of the moon, where the ESA plans to send men within five years.

Obviously, this achievement was not easy for the designers, the stakes are not quite the same for a spacesuit as for a wedding dress. The suit and the spacesuit must protect the astronauts from extreme temperatures, ranging from -233°C to 123°C. They must also be protected from abrasive dust and micrometeorites that crisscross space. Suffice to say that it is better to avoid leaks at the zipper, and that the aesthetic aspect is not really the priority.

For its suit, Cardin explains that it used silver fabrics with incredible properties, including a fabric used on Thales satellites. But while Cardin’s space suit will probably never go to the moon, the haute couture company plans to use its new futuristic fabrics for its own collections, in the form of ventilated leotards, which would cool you down in the summer or warm you up in the winter. According to Cardin’s press release, this first involves “adapting to current environmental challenges by developing textiles resistant to extreme conditions”. With the changing climate, the spacesuit and the diving suit may soon be the latest fashion accessory on Earth…