Jeff Bezos reportedly had his tailor flown into Texas prior to his first-ever Blue Origin space flight because his spacesuit “fit poorly around the crotch”.
On 20 July 2021, the billionaire Amazon founder and three others launched into space from Blue Origin’s launch site in west Texas.
The 11-minute spaceflight, which took place aboard his Blue Origin rocket, was a landmark achievement for the suborbital space tourism industry, which Bezos plans to take advantage of in the coming years.
For the occasion, the 58 year old, and his companions, donned blue jumpsuits with black trim and patches featuring the Blue Origin rocket blasting into space, which the entrepreneur then accessorised with a cowboy hat upon his landing.
However, according to Bloomberg, the outfit initially posed an issue for Bezos, as a witness told the outlet that the world’s second richest man struggled with the fit of the jumpsuit preflight.
According to the witness, who reportedly saw Bezos trying the outfit on for a “preflight photo shoot,” the Blue Origin founder was “volubly upset” because the spacesuit “fit poorly around the crotch”.
To remedy the alleged wardrobe malfunction, the witness claimed that Bezos had his tailor “flown to his Texas ranch to fix it”.
The fix presumably took place before Bezos shared an Instagram video before his flight, in which he expressed his happiness with the outfit. “It feels good to be in the flight suit,” he said, according to the DailyBeast, which noted that Bezos also clarified that the crew didn’t need actual spacesuits, which are typically “pressurised garments,” because the cabin was pressurised and it would have been “redundant”.
Bezos is not the first billionaire to design a custom flight suit, as Richard Branson partnered with Under Armour for his Virgin Galactic uniforms, while Elon Musk reportedly employed costume designer Jose Fernández, who has worked on The Avengers, The Fantastic Four, and Batman v Superman, to design the black-and-white SpaceX Nasa flight outfits.
The Independent has contacted a spokesperson for Blue Origin for comment.
