In the long ago days of the late 1960s, when flight attendants were still called stewardesses, a pair of them wrote an “uninhibited” memoir Coffee, Tea, or Me? recounting sexy escapades at 35,000 feet. It was a sensation and a national bestseller, only it wasn’t real. The book was commissioned by the American Airlines PR team.
Decades later, though, we still dream about the heyday of air travel, and never more so than now. In 2022, airplanes are having a moment. Fights with mask-refusers and seatmates who wear shorts aside, everybody wants to be up in the air after being homebound by the pandemic for two years, Jeremy Scott included. His men’s resort collection for Moschino channeled the jet-set with its psychedelic prints and beach sarongs, and his women’s collection follows the same flight path.
The colorful swirling prints of his men’s reappear here alongside mod, space-aged separates. It’s all aerodynamic A-line shapes, with the addition of patchwork crochet flares and slip dresses. The Moschino gal is headed to her holidays in Honolulu or St. Tropez, not on some hub-and-spoke overnighter for a business meeting. To ratchet up the verisimilitude Scott cast models who conjure ’60s celebrity icons like Diana Ross and Sharon Tate. With her ironed hair, Valentine gives very good Cher.
The glamour of air travel may indeed be a mirage, a fever dream that lingers in the collective unconscious from watching one too many episodes of Mad Men. The Coffee, Tea, or Me? author was a public relations copywriter, but one of the stewardesses who posed as its memoirist was so charmed by the good life of fame that she legally changed her name to her book cover pseudonym. Scott’s transporting vision has its own playful allure.
