Wallpaper Magazine has done a nice write up on the history of the Singapore Girl and her fashionable Sarong Kebayas.
In 1968, the former Malaysian Singapore Airlines called upon French Couturier Pierre Balmain to design uniforms for their cabin crew, with just a minor tweak to the collar in 1974 they have been in continuous service ever since. Balmain based his design on the traditional Malay sarong-kebaya, adding borders round the hem, neck and cuffs (cut from the edges of the traditional batik fabric) and altering the fit for ease of wear. Part of their continual allure is down to Balmain insisting that the uniforms were fully tailored (rather than off the peg), and to this day Singapore Airlines’s in-house tailors have a minimum of two fittings with each crew member and provide her with 4 new uniforms each year.
Do check it out, and the fact that all the Stewardesses featured in the ads have been plucked directly from the aeroplane aisles here.
