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Soaring fantasies of dressing for far-flung destinations have taken off again as the flight jacket, in all its iterations, had a starring role at AW22 shows. Claudia Croft explores the return of the travel wardrobe and is determined not to be defeated by airport queues or lost luggage

I’m one of those people. The type who can’t sleep the night before a trip. It doesn’t matter if it’s Ryanair to Dublin or business class to Tokyo. Work or pleasure, I can never quell the little flurry of excitement that comes with ‘going somewhere’. It’s infinitely preferable to going nowhere.

Travel is liberating. Armed with a booking reference, you are free to imagine another version of yourself somewhere else: ‘Paris Me’ is draped in Rick Owens, spends all her time in art galleries, and looks great in ugly, flat shoes; ‘Miami Me’ has a stash of vintage Versace and isn’t afraid to use it; ‘New York Me’ rocks shoulder pads and never takes the subway, even though poor old ‘London Me’ is rarely off the Victoria line.

We dress differently when we’re away, as if our passports don’t just give us access to another country but another self and wardrobe, too. Frequent-flyer fashion fantasies are part of the romance of travel, which we lost during lockdown. When stay-at-home orders were in place, fashion went out of fashion and joggers reigned triumphant. Sure, we had more important things to worry about than hemlines, but we also lost the ability to imagine ourselves somewhere else. Fashion needs somewhere to go in order to exist. I remember a buyer for one of the big American department stores telling me that the one question he asked of every piece he considered purchasing for the shop was, Where is she going? If he couldn’t figure out the destination, he didn’t choose the piece.

After those two years of lockdowns and uncertainty, we are fully moving again, relishing the joy of travelling and experiencing other places, faces and cultures. Fashion, too, has roared back into view for AW22, with a real sense of adventure. New silhouettes (a Schiaparelli conical bust, anyone?); new designers (hello, Matthieu Blazy at Bottega Veneta and Pieter Mulier at Alaïa); and new collaborations (Gucci meets Adidas, or Roksanda and Fila), as well as a fresh sense of daring (Miu Miu’s ultra-minis are not the for the faint-hearted). Designers have taken the idea of wanderlust and run with it.

If there’s one piece that sums up the new mood, it’s the flight jacket, which zoomed, Top Gun-style, into the picture for AW22. The zip-up jacket, with knitted collar, cuffs and waistband, has emerged as the season’s most versatile piece. It comes shrunken or oversized, works with suiting or party dresses, and fits into any time zone.

Prada supersized it, making it so roomy you could wear it as a belted dress, and encrusted it with crunchy sequins for a look that married cocktail frivolity with edgy toughness. Isabel Marant made enveloping, oversized bombers the main event in her pared-down, functional collection. She styled them over bodycon mini-dresses and thigh boots: part practical, part sexy. Loewe’s luxe, squishy leather version is so soft it could double as a travel pillow. Coperni did an off-the-shoulder version and Versace put a couture-cape spin on it. Etro showed a printed-silk flight jacket over a body suit, suggesting that a lightweight bomber could also double as a beach cover-up.

All of these catwalk styles owe a design debt to Alpha Industries’ cult MA-1 jacket, originally developed for American pilots (hence the bomber nickname) but was then later co-opted by everyone from Mods to skinheads to (briefly) Marilyn Monroe. In 2022, the flight jacket has morphed again into the ultimate go-anywhere, go-with-everything piece, rooted in functionality but able to soar into flights of fashion fancy. That duality fits the mood of now: hope and excitement tinged with a dose of reality.

Remember when Victoria Beckham said that the airport was her catwalk, and she’d teeter through arrivals in sky-high heels, a cocktail dress and a clutch bag? The vibe has shifted, and so have departure lounges. An old friend once confessed that his happy place was in BA first class, being gently woken up by a stewardess and given his breakfast; I think he found the rigid class structure in the skies reassuring. But, even before the pandemic, airports had lost their glamour. They involve queues, delays and cancellations, overpriced food and slow walkers. Airports have to be endured, not enjoyed. I arrive at the terminal with the horrible certainty that I will be sat next to a ‘snorer’ (or worse, a ‘farter’), coupled with the nagging fear of never seeing my suitcase ever again. Anxiously waiting at the carousel, I know how a mother penguin must feel, searching for her baby in a sea of identical chicks. After summer 2022, I’m a cabin-bag convert.

Dior’s creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri understands the need for super versatile, carry-on-suitable pieces. For AW22, she collaborated with D-Air Lab, a technical, specialist Italian company that makes protective clothing and materials for sports, industry and other non-fashion purposes. She worked with the brand on climate-sensitive clothes, which allow the wearer to maintain a stable temperature wherever they are. I met her in Paris after the show and she revealed how she had already imagined a high-tech, adaptable, frequent-flyer wardrobe for the future, which would do away with the need for excess baggage. ‘It’s very clever, very realistic, super comfortable and super functional. Fashion has to think about it,’ she said.

This hand-luggage-only new normal has impacted our wardrobes. Every piece in my case has to count – it needs to fold down to nothing, or double as day or evening wear. I’m eyeing a Skims tank dress that can work as a comfortable base layer or the main event (ditto the Jacquemus/Nike collab for cabin/cocktail pieces). My old green army shirt, which has plenty of handy pockets, has come out of retirement, and I never leave home without a light Brunello Cucinelli scarf that’s warm enough to work as a chic travel blanket but so fine it scrunches into my bag, which, incidentally has got much bigger. My new obsession is the Chanel 22, a deliciously slouchy sack that can hold a laptop but doesn’t look out of place at dinner on the first night.

Travelling light also means you have the option of topping up wherever you are. I love local vintage shops and markets, because you will always find something that’s so out of context to where you come from that its strangeness brings a new perspective to your look. On a recent trip to Lisbon, a city I’d never visited before, the street markets and little design shops stole my heart, although I stopped short of buying a set of brightly patterned plates, gorgeous though they were, because some things only look good in the sunshine.

This article appears in the October 2022 issue of ELLE UK.