Kendall Jenner’s space-themed shirt. Maybe we all can. While out grabbing a smoothie in sun-soaked Malibu, the model wore a black mask and a baseball T-shirt that showed the date of the moon landing, July 20, 1969, with the words “Fly Me To the Moon,” all cradled by two American flags. In quintessential Jenner fashion, the T-shirt was a bit cropped to show off a slice of navel, and she paired it with high-waisted mom jeans and Birkenstocks. It could be merely a space race-themed shirt (lord knows it was all the rage in the 1960s), or a romantic reference to Frank Sinatra’s hit song, but in 2020 it feels like so much more. Maybe it’s just me, but who doesn’t want to catapult themselves off of planet earth and seek refuge on the moon at the moment?
The world is shaky—a vast understatement!—between COVID-19, the upcoming election, climate change…well, you get the point. And jetting through the stratosphere to the moon seems like a fantastical escapist idea. And it is something that we’ve seen before in fashion. Apocalyptic references were rife a few years ago on the Fall 2017 men’s runways as the Doomsday Clock inched closer to midnight only a few months after President Trump was elected. Only a few months later, space travel emerged as a trend following the discovery of Trappist-1, planets that could potentially support human life. Senior Fashion News Writer Emily Farra wrote the following and related it to, well, leaving the plant: “Forget moving to Canada—go to another galaxy! We’ll have to find a new place to live when climate change finally catches up with us, anyway.” Sounds freakishly dystopian. (Save us a seat on the rocket ship, ok?).