August 15, 20267:40 AM ET

Amelia Earhart was famous as an early aviatrix. Her flight suit is part of a bigger story about the history of American fashion and celebrity.

Transcript

EYDER PERALTA, HOST:

The Smithsonian Institution is famously nicknamed the Nation's Attic. In this 250th anniversary year of the United States, we've been looking at hidden treasures in the Smithsonian. Today, NPR's Clare Lombardo tells us about a flight suit made for a woman ahead of her time.

CLARE LOMBARDO, BYLINE: When Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Pacific in 1937, she was trying to become the first woman to fly around the world.

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UNIDENTIFIED COMMENTATOR: This was to have been her greatest achievement - a sky dash of 28,000 miles.

LOMBARDO: But her first first on a long-distance flight was less than a decade prior, not from the cockpit but from the passenger seat. She was the first woman on a transatlantic flight.

ALISON BAZYLINSKI: She borrowed a man's flight suit for that to stay warm. And actually, when she arrives over in the U.K., she has department stores calling her and messaging her, asking to dress her.

LOMBARDO: Alison Bazylinski, an assistant curator at the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum, says soon after that flight, the department store Arnold Constable made Earhart a brown leather jumpsuit lined with wool.

BAZYLINSKI: It has two large cargo pockets above the knees.

LOMBARDO: A big collar, asymmetrical buttons going up one side and a big belt. It was cool.

BAZYLINSKI: There's a record of it from about two weeks later, saying that three people had purchased it for $175 per suit.

LOMBARDO: About $3,400 today.

BAZYLINSKI: This was a very deliberate marketing choice on their part, particularly at a time when the - the American fashion industry is really taking off during this time period, and it's with sportswear.

LOMBARDO: Clothes that were stylish but not fussy. Women's Wear Daily guessed that the other buyers were pilots, too, who needed something warm to wear in the sky. Things got icy when Earhart crossed the Atlantic alone a few years later. Here's what she told the BBC.

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AMELIA EARHART: I knew that there was ice being formed because a slush piled up in front of me on the pane through which I could see a few inches.

LOMBARDO: Soon after, Earhart was also designing functional clothing and luggage. And she was already the aviation editor at Cosmopolitan, touting the benefits of air travel, especially for women.

BAZYLINSKI: She is sort of part of this American style aesthetic and ethos that is really coming into its own in this interwar period.

LOMBARDO: This summer, that brown leather suit is on display in the Smithsonian Castle in Washington, D.C., in a special exhibit called American Aspirations.

Clare Lombardo, NPR News.

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