Houston, We Have a Fashion

I’ve seen many documentaries about space missions, from old black & white ones to new ones, covering the very earliest missions, and on through to the present. I have found it very interesting to note the changing clothing styles of the scientists and engineers as the years have passed.

In the late 50s to early 60s, all the scientists and engineers wore suits and ties, and were very neat and clean cut, reflecting most workplaces. Well, the men did. The women behind the scenes wore proper dresses.

As time moved through the mid 60s into the late 60s, I’ve noticed more and more of them were slowly transitioning to colored shirts with no jacket, as well as sideburns and facial hair.

In the 1970s, more of them were wearing pullover shirts and tees, and their hair was getting longish and more unkempt.

From the 1980s and onward, they have increasingly become more casual. I’ve seen some shots of engineers wearing shorts while working.

Of course nowadays they look like everyone else- Tshirts, tattoos, multiple earrings, brightly dyed hair…. if you saw them walking down the street, you wouldn’t know but what they were just a store clerk or something.

Speaking of hair and scientists, why do so many physicists have wild hair that looks like it never gets combed? Even portraits of some historical scientific figures from a couple hundred years ago look like that. Einstein is instantly recognizable by his hair, but so many are like that.

This post has focused on NASA and other Space agencies, but the casual trend has permeated many other types of workplaces.