The most unintentionally funny press release award this week goes to the California Space Authority, which invited fashion designers to its annual Transforming Space conference in Los Angeles. The goal was to get creative people to rub off on the engineers and vice versa.

"Space Fashion: A Giant Leap for Couture" ensued. Oh. My. If this is the future of space tourism fashion, I'll stay grounded.

Aerospace engineers and scientists in their suits, winged-tipped shoes and white lab coats mixed with fashion aficionados in their stylistic
garments and pastel-colored hair. The punker-set with lip-piercings and black finger-nail polish toasted cocktails with straight-laced rocket scientists in white-collared shirts. The audience was a patch-work of America’s cultures, colors and creeds. Young and old swayed to the techno music that pulsated through the venue and together they gazed upon the colorfully lit runway flanked by big screens with flashing images of deep space and Mars-like terrains.

"For the space enterprise community to maintain its edge in the global space market, our future workforce is going to consist of engineers who think like artists and artists who think like engineers,” added Celeste Volz Ford, Chairman of the Board for CSA and CEO of Stellar Solutions. “In an era where there is conference burn out, CSA has raised the bar by introducing new concepts that command attendion.”

The hour-and-a-half of runway extravaganza featured a variety of designs that ranged from chic flight suits, albeit impractical, to a zero-G-inspired wedding gown created by Japanese designer Eri Matsui. The designs incorporated elements such as metals, string, feathers, gartered stockings, wire, platform boots, stilettos, and even newspaper.

The mostly-fitted fashions revealed plenty of skin, unlike the traditional baggy space suits of modern day astronauts. Although not particularly suited for the real-life environment of space, the collections were a melding of the creative and imaginative world of high-fashion with the engineering minds that are soon to bring commercial human spaceflight to the masses.

Photo Credit: California Space Authority