Lily Koppel's new book, ' The Astronaut Wives Club, ' tells the true story of a group of courageous women who never rocketed into space but nevertheless dedicated their lives to the Mercury Space Program. In the following e-mail interview, Koppel explains how these women banded together in the face of incredible public scrutiny and personal stress - and also how they became style icons for a generation of American women.
In your book, you describe the wives of the astronauts as 'America's first reality TV stars.' What do you mean by that?Their saga, with its countless launch parties, and endless bottles of Champagne, at times seemed less like 'The Right Stuff' and more like 'The Valley of the Dolls' - or 'The Real Housewives of NASA.' After their husbands became astronauts, Life magazine bought the rights to the couples' 'personal stories' for half a million dollars in 1959, so the astronaut families were all thrust into the spotlight. They were constantly exposed to the public, with reporters embedded in their suburban homes in the wonderfully named Houston 'space burbs,' near NASA. The wives' mantra throughout the space race was 'Happy, proud and thrilled.' It was their 'keep calm and carry on' motto, 1960s style, a way of coping with having their lives turned inside out. The press camped out on their lawns during the missions. They had tea with Jackie [Kennedy] and attended high-society galas. They had to smile perfectly after a Life magazine makeover, balancing their extravagantly lacquered rocket-style hairdos. (If you've seen the Slim Aarons photos of the young moms and matrons of Palm Beach, they actually look very astro-wifey.) They banded together to cope with the unique pressures of being married to spacemen - including dealing with absentee husbands constantly tempted by 'Cape Cookies,' as the astronaut groupies were known.
Describe the style of these women - did they dress conservatively because they were subjected to so much publicity, or did they strut into the spotlight?
One of the wives' first bonding experiences was a photo shoot for the Sept. 21, 1959 cover of Life. They all wore pink lipstick that the editors changed to red in the magazine's pages. The wives were shocked! As one told me, 'We would never wear lipstick so prominent!' It had been the Eisenhower era, but suddenly it was the space age, and the flare of a bright patriotic red on the astro wives' lips better promised America the moon and the stars. Platinum-blonde Rene Carpenter, who J.F.K. made clear was his favorite, was opinionated, savvy and went onto write her own women's newspaper column. People magazine described her as the 'archetypal astro wife.' By the end of the book, she has adopted a Gloria Steinem look and is hosting her own feminist television show, essentially taking on the patriarchy. As far as the astronaut wives' personal style goes, the country did love them in 'flag colors' - red, white and blue. Most of them were pretty conservative for the period, except for Carpenter. She wore loud dresses and clothes by Pierre Cardin and Rudi Gernreich. As she told reporter Myra MacPherson in a 1968 New York Times profile, she usually found daring designer clothes on sale. 'I'm not the understated type. It bores me to tears,' she said. She was photographed with her family's pet husky, which became her impromptu fashion accessory.
To what extent did America's fascination with space in the '60s and '70s affect the way normal American women dressed? Did they take any cues from the wives of astronauts?
New Frontier style was of course not confined to the wives of astronauts. It would include skyrocketing hair; screaming miniskirts; vivid, sherbet-swirled Pucci dresses; and intergalactic white vinyl Mary Quant miniskirts - to match NASA's gleaming spacecrafts. Soon, bouffant bubble hairdos appeared on runways, on sidewalks and in typing pools, along with frosted 'Moon Drops' lipstick, advertised by Revlon in 1968 as 'the lipstick to wear to the moon.' The rule of thumb seemed to be: Your hair should resemble your Jell-O mold. Later, during the heyday of the Apollo Moon missions, Pucci was all the rage. Norman Mailer called tall, model-thin astro wife Jane Conrad 'sensationally attractive.' Her husband, Pete Conrad, went to the moon on Apollo 12 and Emilio Pucci specially designed a candy-colored jersey minidress for her to wear to the launch festivities. The space age marked the dawn of many daring runway fashions. Meanwhile, designers like André Courrèges, inspired by men traveling to the moon, created polka-dot haute couture space helmets and white plastic 'Eskimo' sunglasses.
In the course of reporting this book, you had the opportunity to meet and get to know many of the women in this story. What are they like today? Are any of them still fashion pioneers?
I interviewed more than 30 women, individually and together in groups. They were very encouraging of one another and felt this was the right time to tell their story. They opened up their lives and homes to me, sharing their stories and memories (photo albums, scrapbooks - the Pinterest of the 1960s - and in the case of Betty Grissom, her vintage designer wardrobe purchased mostly from Neiman Marcus in the 1960s, including a pair of fur hot pants!). Marilyn Lovell (who people are already familiar with from the movie 'Apollo 13″) was in Paris with her astronaut husband, Jim, recently, so their daughter, 'Astrokid' Susan Lovell, joined me on book tour in Chicago. She is lovely and takes after her mom Marilyn with her fabulous style. Susan wore a pink dress swirling with paisley that looked like a 1960s Pucci. She also looks very much like her mom. Like many of the astro wives, she was wearing a piece of 'space bling,' as I call it - a silver Apollo 8 medallion (worn on a sterling choker around her neck) that flew on the first manned mission to orbit the moon over Christmas 1968. Back then, when Jim was on the flight, he sent Marilyn - waiting back on earth - a special gift, a mink jacket from Neiman Marcus that arrived via a chauffeured Rolls-Royce and came with the most romantic card in the universe: 'To Marilyn from the Man in the Moon.'
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