What are you wearing on the plane?
August 4th 2007 02:34
The plastic zip-lock check-in bag
Time was when air travel (like smoking) was synonymous with elegance, glamour and sophistication. People dressed up for the plane. I remember, sometime in the 1960s, farewelling a glamorous neighbourhood sophisticate before she left on the first leg of her flight “home” to England. She wasn’t English, actually, but that was what sophisticates called the place back then
“Go on, Dor, model your outfit for us” urged a head full of rollers.
While Doreen readied herself behind a closed door, the apron/hairnet/ rollers assembly seethed with whispered sour-grapes
“She’s mad!” “Wouldn’t catch me going all that way on a plane!” “Anything goes wrong – you’re done for!” “Like going up in a little tin can!” “Yeah, whoosh” one pessimist snapped her fingers and rolled her eyes.
The door opened, and accompanied by a chorus of gasps and squeals, Doreen, in pale blue coat, gloves and pill-box hat, sashayed on white pointy-toed high-heels across the kitchen, swinging a shiny white hand-bag. At the stove she twirled, turned, tossed her head and peeled the coat from her shoulders to reveal a coordinated, tight, blue and white floral frock.
“Ta da!” she trilled, throwing her arms in the air, hitting a hairnet with the handbag and swiping an apron with the coat.
“Marlene Modes!”
“You’ll have to wear a girdle to hold that tummy in, though” sniped the hair net.
“When are you having your hair set?’ inquired the rollers, scrutinising Doreen’s collapsing beehive.
“Tomorrow, morning!”
“That pilot better look out, eh girls?” clucked another apron.
Next day, the whole street was out to see Doreen leave for the airport. There were more squeals and gasps as a quartet of nicotine-coloured cases were loaded into the boot of a taxi. There was a giant suitcase, bound round the middle with straps, a small weekend case, a brief-case, then last of all, the epitome of glamour, the movie-star make-up case - square, with a gold handle on top. Everyone stared in envious silence until the taxi had carried Dor’s reconstructed beehive and regally waving glove around the corner and out of sight.
Whether it was the spell of Doreen’s ensemble, or the magic of her personality, she did charm a pilot somewhere en route and never returned. From time to time, for a few years, little red and blue edged envelopes stamped with “par avion” arrived in local letterboxes, news of Doreen’s globe-trotting life with the pilot was relayed with alacrity from apron to apron and Avion enjoyed a season of enormous popularity as a name for neighbourhood newborns.
Elegant fowls like Doreen have all but disappeared from modern aircraft and the question, “What are you wearing on the plane?” has been relegated to the Dictionary of Archaisms. The occasional bouffant head still totters down airplane aisles, on stilettos, to monopolise the mirrors in the toilets but most of those, too, have vanished with the roller, the hairnet and the apron. Of course, in First and Business Class, where there are cupboards, hangers and a hanging service, there are always some suits but even there, the hat, the gloves and the tie have gone the way of the girdle and the coordinated frock/ coat.
Most twenty first century travelers don’t care what they wear. They don’t dress to impress, unless of course it’s with nonchalant chic and casual elegance. They dress for comfort and for speed. With the 24 centimetres of clearance allowed in most aircraft seats, where it's impossible even to raise an arm to scratch and with the series of strips and frisks through Departures, the prickly, constrictling, hard to get into/ out of, buttoned or metal-studded garment is strictly out. Today’s preferred travel fashions are roomy and expandable, quickly and easily removable, with a multitude of pockets and flaps. They’re lycra and elastic, plastic-zipped, domed and velcroed. This is the age of the travelling track-suit, cargo and crop pants; jeans and shorts (baggy or stretchy); t shirts, big shirts; polar-fleece sweats; pyjamas, runners, ugg boots and thongs. Even the Doreens of old, now runaway retirees, are in cargos, polar fleeces and velcro strapped runners or sandals.
Conveyer belts still spit the odd giant travel trunk onto carousels down in Baggage Claim but they’re a long way from Doreen’s belted nicotine classic. Straps are gone; plastic shrink wrapping and coded padlocks are in. The big bulging sports bag, soft and stuffed, with a paunchy unstrapped middle and limp handles, has appeared. The back back and the computer bag have ousted the weekender. If they still linger they're speedsters on wheels. But saddest of all, that epitome of movie-star glamour, the make-up case, has given way to the miserable little plastic zip-lock check-in bag.
The runway romance, too, is unheard of now. Although, hopefully, sometimes, it still happens that the occasional sophisticate among the track-suits and cargoes of Economy Class, still pierces the heart of a pilot and flies on happily ever after. But mostly, if the cabin blind is raised on an airborne affair, it’s one of the hasty liaisons of the Mile High Club. And, of course, now that our world’s full of seasoned fliers with savoir faire who know foreign phrases and can trip them off the tongue, Avion, as a name, has fallen out of favour.
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