Hotel Indigo Chester: An Opulent Stay with Charm and Comfort

When Tim Peake’s spacesuit curtailed his spacewalk this month, because of quivers that it might spring a leak, designers – the fashion, not the Nasa kidney – were no doubt itching to have a go at making him a new one. Blame it on Peake or David Bowie’s Starman, but interval – the final frontier – is on fashion’s radar once again.

Raf Simons and Nicholas Ghesquiere started all of this off, confirming retro-futuristic fashion that paid homage to Pierre Cardin and he recently-departed Andre Courreges’ pause chic in the 60s (another moment when spaceflight was in the news, of practice). Simons’s 2014 couture show for Dior melded astronauts with courtiers at the court of Marie Antoinette, and he later tempered to Cardin’s space-bubbled south of France home as the venue for the 2016 Coast show. Ghesquiere’s Louis Vuitton collections continue on the range theme – spring/summer takes it virtual, with Minecraft and Tron on the temper board.

At the men’s shows in Milan last week, astronauts acted almost as often on the catwalk as the inevitable Bowie tributes. Versace yielded a show dedicated, as Donatella said, to the future. The mood – all glistening white plastic – felt very 2001 (the film, not the year), primarily when the show began with models running about the darkened catwalk in bright fibre-optic outfits, like those trailing for a mission. When the lights went up, Versace’s idea of an astronaut was earthbound, grease and boardroom-ready, probably with important financial reports slightly than space food in his backpack-cum-jetpack. He wore a silver mac, or chunky unclouded white trousers and matching biker jackets, a bit like the the latest thing version of Buzz Lightyear’s outfit. A cropped leather jacket with Versace’s rendering of Nasa badges was another highlight of haute astronaut make.

Calvin Klein, for the moment, went for metallic minimalism, an aesthetic that totally outfits space, and even feels a bit like The Force Awakens. Perhaps it’s a inflate, but the opening outfit – a white denim jacket and matching jeans, with rickety scratches – could be seen as a fashion nod to Finn and his Storm Trooper organization, complete with a handprint of blood on his helmet. Away from trifling links to Star Wars, there was definitely the influence of existent space. Puffa jackets and the insides of macs had the gold shimmering finish of the multi-layered insulation foil used on space pokes.

Both of these marks are no doubt envious of Y-3. The Adidas brand, overseen by Yohji Yamamoto, is cajoling to make real flight suits – or at least the prototypes for what Virgin Galactic’s consumers for Space Ship Two will be wearing in 2017 when the vessel is expected to take off. The clothes don’t look like the Michelin man spacesuits we are utilized to. Instead, they are slick and streamlined, a space-ready version of the minimum sportswear that Y-3 customers have become familiar with throughout the past decade. They come with Yamamoto’s battle-cry in mind: “With one eye on the past I walk backwards into the tomorrows.” The future is bright, then – and it’s certainly in fashion.