On the occasion of the Space Day, the Italian Embassy in Luxembourg held a webinar dedicated to technical clothing in space entitled “Italian Fashion in Space: habitable and wearable solutions for extreme environmental conditions”.
As is well known, the human exploration of celestial bodies presents man with numerous challenges of a physical nature arising from a hostile environment with no atmosphere, reduced gravity and heavily exposed to radiation. The spacesuit becomes, therefore, a survival garment: the minimum livable environment in the most inhospitable one. Designed with high-performance fabrics inspired by the so-called ‘heroic era’ of polar navigation, extreme mountaineering and deep sea exploration, this garment skilfully combines technology and design to such an extent that it also offers new applications in the fashion industry.
While opening the proceedings, Dr. Simonetta Di Pippo, Director of the Space Economy Evolution Lab (SEE Lab) and Professor of space economy practice at the SDA Bocconi School of Management in Milan, emphasized Italy’s role in the sector of commercial and non-commercial space stations, such as the ISS, developed with public funds.
The webinar got to the heart of the topic with the speech by Prof. Valentina Sumini, Visiting Professor at the Politecnico di Milano and Research Affiliate at MIT Media, who, assisted by Dr. Alessandro Caruso, researcher at the Politecnico di Milano, presented a study on the spacesuit conceived as a tool to ensure survival in reduced gravity environments and aimed at training and maintaining muscle mass. The talk was rounded off by Prof. Domenico Prattichizzo, Professor of Industrial and Information Engineering at the University of Siena, who explored the topic of wearable smart devices.
Lastly, Dr. Corinna Sperandini, CEO of Spacewear – an Italian company specialising in hi-tech clothing for the aerospace sector that developed the new Smart Flight suite 1 spacesuit for the Axiom Virtute I mission in collaboration with Italian cosmonaut Walter Villadei, guest of honour at the webinar – spoke from the NASA training base in Houston.
Ambassador Diego Brasioli emphasised that “the event is part of the initiatives that this Embassy has taken to foster synergies between Italy and Luxembourg – the only two EU countries that are members of the ‘Artemis’ programme, which will return man to the moon by 2024, with a view to the creation of a permanent base on our satellite and future human exploration on Mars. The initiatives have been carried out in collaboration with the Luxembourg Space Agency, the Italian Space Agency and other local and international institutions over the last two years, with a specific focus on space economy, space architecture and Italian Food in Space”.
