Concierges (Flight Attendants who aren’t allowed to be called Flight Attendants in case they ask to be allowed to sleep) were the first victms of ‘Rob Wear’ fetish. One has to feel sorry for this poor dear putting on a brave face while someone asks if Rob let her have his shirt after breakfast:

http://albionlondon.typepad.com/log/images/2008/06/17/dsc00442.jpg

Midlife crisis taste, a matronly designer, and middle managers without a clue, sounds like the perfect team to come up with the worlds worst airline uniform:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-1242308/Air-New-Zealand-staff-say-new-cabin-crew-uniform-makes-look-like-drag-queens.html

Now, wear can I find an obscure rag mag to award Air NZ Uniform of the Year.

It looks like I’ll be flying anyone but NZ cos those uniforms will hurt my eyes!

Looking for flights, I was surprised to discover that if you go the Air New Zealand website to try to book a ticket to India, it does not recognize any Indian destination. Delhi, Mumbai or Chennai, or their three letter codes, the booking engine will tell you – “no airports found.”

Now I believe Air NZ has agreements with airlines that do fly to India – and Singapore is one – but I know that if I were Indian I would simply go to another airline’s website.

This was confirmed to me by the Indian family at my local store, who prefer to fly Singapore when they go to India with Qantas as second choice.

When they fly trans-Tasman, of course they use Qantas so they can build by frequent flyer points.

I asked them about Air New Zealand and one of them laughed and said that Air NZ doesn’t even know where India is.

I’m not suggesting that Air NZ fly its own aircraft do India, but I do think they should make it somewhat easier for Indian Kiwis – a sizeable minority – to get to India.

And I think that has a greater priority than throwing yet more money at yet another trendy Auckland designer.

These photos are 7 years old but that uniform still looks fresh and smart – and is both identifiably New Zealand and Air New Zealand.

Bring back someone who understood fashion and brand management. Bring back Barbara Lee.

http://www.airnewzealand.co.nz/resources/tasman_takeoff_1.jpg

http://www.airnewzealand.co.nz/resources/tasman_takeoff_3.jpg

Still, the public is very strange and mostly unfathomable, unless you talk to market researchers and the like. Perhaps Air NZ could gather twenty top designers and critics and form a focus group?

I think trust is the most important thing for an airline to convey. Funky is – well great if your target market is under 20, or whatever funky means?

Other than that, a great design for airlines is for planes that stay in the air and don’t hit things – everything else is secondary ; )

NO THEY CAN’T because the whole range is vile. We hate it and we are sick of being patronised by people in the Hub who are totally disengaged from our customers, our community and our front line staff.

Middle managers can backtrack from this mess all they like by trying to reframe with words like “concept”, “choose”, or “it’s just a picture” but at the end of the day its an unattractive glut which offends universal rules of colour, cut, and shape.

Even the models look ill fitted and dressed down. She needs to fix her posture, and her flyaways, and get her pants taken up. He needs to get a haircut and shave. Sloppy and unpolished.

Across the terminals of the world these people will look like a gaggle of white trash. Instead, they should look like a beacon of smart, professional, trusted uber-Kiwis.

BASICS!

Thank god the media have covered this debacle so that staff can express their opinions on sites which are safe from KoruNet’s thought-policing.
They have a year to put the brakes on this pink and snot coloured triviality especially if its going to appear in the 777-300 cabins. That is millions of dollars wasted on a brand campain that will be unidentifiable and impossible to change in the long term because of the high aircraft furnishing cost.

This entire project stinks of the closed door ‘we know best’ pompousness that typifies Air New Zealand’s middle management culture. It is ruining our brand and workplace morale.

I wonder what self-satisfying bonu$ criteria will result in back scratching payouts for this one.

Make a choice – embrace best practice in everything you do or keep up the brand damaging nonsense that will cost our shareholders (the people of New Zealand) more millions.

Take a step outside the Hub (‘The Hubble’) and start engaging with the expertise in the world around you.

Stop trivialising our brand, stop patronising our staff and public, and GET BACK TO BASICS.

I avoided mentioning Barbara Lee, but there’s more experience designing uniforms AND designing for wealthy middle-class women there than perhaps has ever been shown by Trelise… Her Air NZ designs were probably the best ever, if stylish and professional was part of the brief….

And I see that Kate S was (apparently?) asked to submit but knocked back. By the Air New Zealand branding experts? Hmmm they must be looking for more flounce to present us internationally. Or something.

@MissDom, being a good businesswoman does not make you a great designer – ask some successful designers and if they are really honest, well they will tell you that you can be stunningly creative, contemporary and fashion forward, but that just won’t make you succeed on it’s own. It would not be fair for me to name some, but we can probably all come up with some names.

My opinion is that design – as opposed to art – is about problem solving. A designer is given a set of constraints and comes up with a way to solve the problem within those boundaries. If the problem is posed as a question, and the outcome is not the solution, we should try to make sure the right question was being asked in the first place.

Which leads us to the brief, and those who wrote it. I think that the marketing department at ANZ are either really clever for generating so much publicity by releasing these embarrassing pictures or just unable to make a good decision about some bad results, coming from an ill-conceived brief.

OK, Dressing up the cabin crew in clown suits will be great for the rugby sevens, but what if your core income is from business travel?

These are not design decisions, they are strategic marketing – something design has a relatively minor role to play in, but can cause considerable loss if handled incorrectly. Let’s hope this comes out alright, as we all own a bit of the National Airline.

So.. who has the best airline uniform? And would you pay more to fly with them because of it?