“A spacesuit is made out of a flight suit, a Goodrich tire, a bra, a girdle, a raincoat, a tomato worm.” - Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo by Nicholas de Monchaux
This story first found me, of all places, while I was browsing Pinterest. A Tumblr post from a year or so ago appeared, photographs of seamstresses hard at work, concentration knitting their brow as their needles flew. My eyes paused. Then my smile widened when I read what they were working on.
NASA almost didn’t go to space. Neil Armstrong nearly missed the moon landing. For first, they had to figure out how man wouldn’t implode, suffocate, or die in some other horrific fashion when they stepped out of the space shuttle. The astronauts needed to be ensconced in something durable, airtight, but also flexible and light. This is where The Playtex Ladies came in, innovative seamstresses with intelligence, diligence, and courage in the face of fear.
Yes, you read that right: the first spacesuit, the first fabric to touch the surface of the moon, was made by the seamstresses of a bra company.
Playtex—a subdivision of the International Latex Corporation (ILC)—gained the honor of crafting these spacesuits via innovation and sheer determination. In 1966, NASA conducted an invitation-only testing of possible spacesuits; contractors like Litton Industries and Hamilton Standard were welcomed to the test. Playtex, as a fairly humble factory based in Delaware, wasn’t even considered until they sent in footage of their prototype in motion. Their motley crew—comprised of experienced seamstresses and amateur engineers—had come up with a suit designed entirely of fabric, light, flexible, able to be put through the paces without folding. Their video, showcasing an employee wearing the suit and engaging in football drills, earned them a place in the competition. The team worked near-24-hour shifts for six weeks.
And they blew the competitors out of the water. Their fabric suit outperformed those with “more experience” in every way. They were light, where the others were bulky. They were flexible, where the others were stiff. And they retained their airtight nature even with that comfort. This superior spacesuit was crafted “by drawing on the craft-culture handiwork and expertise of seamstresses, rather than on the hard-line culture of engineering.” And it clearly worked.
The Playtex Ladies were hired.
When each woman was brought onto the team, they were trained with rigor and minutiae. Each learned “how to read blueprints, [work] with engineers and precision sewing using newly designed threads and multiple delicate layers of fine fabrics.” Their talent-found, skill-trained hands were needed. Each spacesuit was comprised of 21 layers of gossamer-thin fabric, sewn to the precise tolerance of 1/64th an inch. Agility and accuracy was required if these men were to survive.
There was an extreme amount of pressure on these women, as one can imagine. One of the seamstresses, Anna Lee Minner, would later recall: “I went home on many a night and cried because I knew I couldn't do it. I was scared. This was a person's life this depended on.” Basil Hero, in his The Mission of a Lifetime, agreed, saying that “they may have had the most important job of all.” After all, they were essentially making mini-spacecraft. In their suit, an astronaut is one pinprick, one incorrect seam, away from death.
This was further exemplified by the devastation of January 1967. During a test launch, a spark in Apollo 1’s pure oxygen atmosphere triggered an inferno, killing the three astronauts trapped inside (Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger B. Chaffee). The grief infiltrated The Playtex Ladies; with it, they took out anything that could burn, rending the suits as inflammable as possible.
And that’s what Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin wore to the moon in 1969. It’s what astronauts today still wear: ILC continues to make the spacesuits, with a nearly all female team (one male joined in the mid-2000s).
That’s not all The Playtex Ladies have done, either. In 1973, seamstress Aylene Baker was recruited to fix NASA’s micrometeoroid heatshield: she succeeded by crafting very thin layers of aluminum using Mylar, laminated nylon, and more traditional, paper-thin nylon. Teams of seamstresses were brought onboard to handstitch the shuttle’s thermal shields, each one taking around four days to complete.
Since 1969, the work of The Playtex Ladies has not failed. They were innovative, clever, skillful, and courageous in the face of fear. One small step for man, perhaps, but one giant step for female craft.
Before we go, I’d like to place here a few of their names, the ones I could find: Jeanne Wilson, Joanne Thompson, Lillie Elliott, Jean Wright, Ruth Anna Ratledge, Aylene Baker, and Anna Lee Minner. Thank you for the stars, ladies.
Sources/For More Info: “What Did Playtex Have to Do With Neil Armstrong?” by Emily Spivack, “The seamstresses who helped put a man on the moon” by Tracy Smith, “The women who sewed the suits for the space race” by Sue Nelson, Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo by Nicholas de Monchaux
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