Ms Prudence Black
Teaches in the area of Fashion Design History and Theory and is a broadcaster on contemporary design matters.
Flying High: Flight Attendant Performative Fashion
Valentines Day 1980, Set designer Calvin Churchman dressed a window and called it "Airplane Crash". It featured the interior of a plane, angled against the sidewalk. A stewardess, whose day job was stripping, ran up and down the aisles screaming. The performance went for as long as she could keep up the screaming. This paper takes this moment as a starting point to analyse the appearance of the flight attendant and the way this profession lends itself to a camp "glorification of character" (Sontag). In the 1960s there was nothing more glamorous than a flight attendant, while today it is hard not to read the inflight safety demonstrations as a semiotics of a highly formal (post-erotic) showgirl code with a bit of camp irony. But is it the snappy uniform or the routine of gestures which lends itself so neatly to performance? This paper will discuss the role of the uniform in the imagery and spectacle of the performative acts of the flight attendant both in the air, on stage, and in contemporary films.
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