Flights of Fashion: How Amelia Earhart Became America's First Celebrity Designer (PHOTOS)

Editor's note: In honor of today's release of Fox Searchlight's "Amelia," we're re-publishing this post. It originally ran on July 20th.

Unlike aviators lost in the sky, fashions always come back. Among the styles recently returned from the dead are micro minis, skinny belts, jumpsuits, platform shoes -- and, now, the Amelia Earhart look.

It's been revived by Jean Paul Gaultier for the fall Hermes ready-to-wear collection soon arriving in stores, and it features shirts with narrow ties, trousers, leather pencil skirts and bomber jackets. At the Hermes show in Paris last March, models wore aviator hats and goggles with the clothes, as the roar of prop-plane engines set up beyond the catwalk filled the air. "I was inspired by a woman, I forgot her name, an American pilot with very short, wavy hair who was wearing an aviator jacket, which I love, and a little scarf that was so Hermes," Gaultier told the Associated Press.

He probably would be surprised to know that old what's her name wasn't just a style icon; she also had her own fashion label. In fact, Amelia Earhart was America's first celebrity designer, and the story of her short-lived Amelia Earhart line is the story of the start of fashion mass marketing.

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Amelia Earhart in 1932.

Earhart was an unlikely style star. When she burst onto the world stage in 1928, following her first transatlantic flight (never mind that she was only riding in the plane with two male pilots, she still was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic), Earhart was derided in the press for her gawky, disheveled appearance. Skinny, freckled, short-haired and boyish looking, she bore a strong resemblance to Charles Lindbergh, and "Lindy in drag" was one of the nicer sobriquets given her. She showed no feminine interest in clothes. While flying, she favored old, high-laced shoes, well-worn trousers, an ancient leather coat with deep pockets, a soft leather helmet and goggles. On land, she wore pretty much the same thing, without the headgear.

This was not the look of an American female idol, and Earhart's manager and husband, publisher George Charles Putnam, vowed to glam her up. Earhart was pretty, with a lovely smile, bright blue eyes, wavy blonde hair and a model's tall, willowy figure (marred somewhat by thick lower legs, one reason she didn't like wearing dresses). With the help of a make-up artist, hair stylist and a new wardrobe of well tailored clothes, she morphed into a paragon of androgynous chic -- just like Katherine Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich, two other trouser-wearing, gender-bending beauties who also happened to appear on screen as aviators.

After Earhart's solo flight across the Atlantic in May 20-21, 1931, a feat not coincidentally performed on the fourth anniversary of Lindbergh's historic flight, Earhart and Putnam searched for ways to raise money for the aviatrix's next venture while promoting her image as a national heroine.

They focused on fashion. At the time, American designers labored in obscurity in the backrooms of Seventh Avenue, "like the kitchen help," as Bill Blass once noted. While Paris designers were world famous celebrities -- the names of Chanel, Lanvin, Schiaparelli, Patou, and Paquin, heralded from the pages of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar and the women's pages of the nation's newspapers -- labels on even the highest-end American fashion contained only the names of the manufacturers.

Earhart and her husband convinced the U.S. Rubber Company that her name would sell, and Amelia Earhart Fashion, underwritten by the tire enterprise, debuted in 1934. The clothes were offered in special Amelia Earhart shops in a single department store per city (in New York, Macy's and in Chicago, Marshall Field's). The label, sewn into each garment, featured the aviatrix's signature in black with a thin red line streaking through it to a little red plane soaring in the right corner.

In interviews with the press, Earhart said her goal was to bring the beauty she'd found in aviation closer to all women at prices that didn't reach "new altitudes." In the air, she had a touch of recklessness -- it was part of her charm, a sign of her rebellion against a world that wouldn't allow women to be adventurous, and it probably contributed to her presumed death in July, 1937 (she disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean while attempting a circum-navigational flight of the globe). Her clothes, however, were utterly safe and conventional -- basically copies of mainstream sportswear, with some gimmicky, aviation-themed trimmings.

Many of the fashions -- a windbreaker and a leather trench coat, for example -- mimicked Earhart's flying clothes and were made in washable, practical fabrics like Grenfell cotton, a staple of English hunting wear. Other styles included tweed suits and coats in neutral tones and deep pocketed raincoats in "parachute" silk with buttons shaped like propellers. Earhart told one newspaper that she nearly always incorporated in the styles "something characteristic of aviation, a parachute cord or tie or belt, a ball-bearing belt buckle, wing bolts and nuts for buttons."

Reporters made much of the fact that Amelia owned a sewing machine and had made her own clothes as a girl. She suggested colors and fabrics for her fashion line, but it's unlikely she did any actual designing.

Despite a blizzard of publicity, Earhart fashion failed to catch on with the public, and the line disappeared from America's stores even before the aviatrix vanished. One piece of her own clothing, however, turned up a few weeks later. It was a long white and brown scarf that a man named Wilbur Rothar offered to Earhart's husband as proof of her survival. Rothar claimed that Earhart had been captured by a boat running arms near New Guinea, and he demanded $2,000 from Putnam for his wife's return. As it turned out, Rothar was a New York janitor who years earlier, while in a crowd cheering Earhart's arrival from a routine landing at Long Island's Roosevelt Field, had caught the silk garment as the wind blew it from around her neck.

After Rothar's arrest, Putnam reclaimed the scarf, a symbol of Amelia Earhart's glamorously daring spirit -- the spirit Gaultier no doubt tried to capture in this fall's aviatrix inspired clothes.

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Comments

[kimraeh]

I LOVE the Earhart look!

This is a great fashion post!!!

Kim
www.runwayrundown.com

[GreatLabels]

Fantastic article about Amelia Earhart. I'm glad she's getting some recognition again because of these great fall fashions. Bazaar had a great photo spread on Earhart-inspired fashions! I love the look so much!

http://twitter.com/greatlabelssm

[GreatLabels]

What a great article! Nice to see Amelia Earhart returning to the public eye again with a lot of the awesome aviator-style fashions this Fall. I think Bazaar also had a great photo spread with that whole look. Love it!

http://twitter.com/GreatLabelsSM

[mergina]

Awesone. Love Amelia.

[Weirdwriter]

This is one of the best Style pieces I've read on Huffington Post -- intelligent, interesting and entertaining.

Ms.Earhart was extremely fortunate to have had such a supportive and savvy husband. It wasn't often, in those days, that a nontraditional woman could get "wings" from her menfolks.

[Gioia Diliberto - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks! I love Amelia, too.

[Sloane7]

What a great story; her label was clever too.

[TigersEye]

The movie with Hilary Swank looks good but I don't think I want to walk around looking like I'm ready to fly a plane. Interesting back story about Earhart as a designer, though.

(And Gaultier might want to learn the name of who inspired his designs, ha ha.)

[krayonc]

LOVE LOVE LOVE.....great pics! Didn't Earhart also do luggage?

[kotexbarbie]

Yes, I have a suitcase with an Amelia Earhart label (def..1960s) I got it from my aunt.

[johnnygoodwud]

just goes to show,,,,,,,,,,what goes around comes around

[merrill1]

Actually, Jean Paul Gaultier is old enough (57) to know very well that old miss what's her name had her own ideas about style. But if he actually acknowledged knowing about what's her name, we would then realize he had no new idea of his own, and that he just was exploiting her, uh, you know, what's her name with the cute jacket and little Hermes scarf next to the plane. I think she flew somewhere, duh. N'est pas?

[abulafia]

I was just thinking about aviator jackets and Eisenhower jackets. And thank you for some comfort and practicality again, yay Annie Hall! I got expelled from eighth grade for wearing pants in '68; me + three friends were going to show up on the same day in Navy jeans, but I was the only one who did, I had had it with whole girdle + stockings thing...what bondage! I, too, find it tragic that Amelia is reduced to a fashion inspiratio­n--althoug­h it could actually be a great thing in a way: if girls, whom the culture has made into such mini fashionistas, can have a role model of a woman aviator instead of a disinherited zero like Paris Hilton. It may be superficial but it could effect some type of deeper change or awareness.

[whateverlolawants]

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by her, but never knew anything about the fashion label. So to me, I've always admired her just for her adventures, but now that I'm older, I'm digging her style too!

[mairs]

What a cool lady.

[bentax645]

She was like the Coco Chanel of the USA. She had panache, authenticity, independence and style all bundled in to a very appealing package.

http://www.benjaminkanarekblog.com

[Tommygun264]

Annie Hall meets Emma Peel - smart, chic & sexy.

Great article. Love the pix.

[waldopepper]

I am struck by the sad fact that despite her aeronautical achievements, however contrived they may have been, Amelia can still be reduced to a caricature playing a traditionally female role. I would suspect that she is rolling over in her watery grave.

I guess you haven’t come a long way after all baby.

[whateverlolawants]

I've never gotten the impression she's thought of as just a fashionista by the world at large. I liked this article because I learned about a whole other side of her, but I still think her aviation accomplishments and adventurous attitude are much more admirable.

[mairs]

As long as humans can hold more than one facet of a person's life in their mind at one time, there is no danger that Amelia Earhart will lose her place in aviation history.