How Jacquemus Expanded the Brand Experience

From Dior's uniforms in 1962 to Jacquemus's pajamas in 2025, Air France's fashion collaborations are expanding from cabin crew to experiences for passengers.

New pajamas have appeared in the suites of "La Première," Air France's top-tier cabin departing from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport. Made from navy blue cotton, they feature Jacquemus's signature rounded-square buttons, Air France's winged seahorse emblem, and the Jacquemus wordmark.

They are the first first-class pajamas in Air France's history created by a designer exclusively for passengers. This collaboration is meaningful in that Air France's fashion partnerships have expanded beyond crew uniforms into products passengers experience firsthand.

Air France's Fashion Collaborations

Air France has long collaborated with world-renowned fashion houses on uniforms.

• 1962 (Dior): Introduced cabin crew uniforms designed by Marc Bohan.
• 1969 (Balenciaga): Applied Cristóbal Balenciaga's structured designs.
• 1978 (Carven · Nina Ricci · Grès): Created accessible uniforms in a tricolor combination.

If the collaborations of the past 60 years centered on "uniforms" worn by crew and seen by passengers, this partnership with Jacquemus centers on "products" that passengers wear and keep themselves on board. The focus has shifted from "luxury you see" to "luxury you experience."

The Tangible Benefits for the Brands

Air France La Première operates as an ultra-premium first-class service. It's a special touchpoint for fashion brands as well, in that it allows them to deliver a brand experience directly to a small group of high-spending customers who are hard to reach through general mass advertising alone.

• Benefits for Jacquemus: Going beyond mass buzz driven by social media, it can let luxury customers with real purchasing power experience the brand directly.
• Benefits for Air France: If Dior and Balenciaga symbolized the luxury of the last century, Air France can convey its brand image to a new generation of luxury travelers through Jacquemus, a brand with present-day sensibility and cultural relevance.

How a Product Becomes a Memory

The highlight of this collaboration is the pouch the pajamas come in. Jacquemus applied its signature surreal trompe-l'œil design to the pouch and attached genuine Jacquemus buttons, designing it to be reusable.

Made so passengers can take it with them after the trip, the pouch can be reused to hold cosmetics or personal items. A one-time in-flight experience stays in the customer's daily life after the flight, serving as a keepsake that brings the brand back to mind.

💡 Fashion Business Insights

Brands: Extend the brand experience to spaces beyond fashion: Jacquemus isn't stopping at fashion week runways; it's widening its touchpoints to major concerts (Bad Bunny), sportswear collaborations, and even luxury airline amenities. Letting people experience a brand's worldview in spaces outside fashion stores can be one strategy for meeting new customer groups.

Marketers: Use the spaces where customers spend time as brand touchpoints: Hospitality spaces where customers stay for a period of time, such as luxury hotels, yachts, and aircraft, are places where a brand can be experienced naturally. It's worth considering ways to connect the brand to customers' journeys and stays, going beyond one-off pop-ups.

Buyers: Check the brand premium a collaboration creates
Collaborations with highly symbolic partners such as airlines and hotels connect a brand's image to a specific lifestyle. For multi-brand stores, looking at how convincingly this kind of collaboration history supports the actual price range and brand positioning of the products can also serve as one criterion.

💡 EDITORIAL SMALL TALK

Marc Bohan's Dior 60 Years Ago, and Jacquemus Today
Marc Bohan, who collaborated with Air France in 1962, was the designer leading Dior at the time. That Air France has chosen Jacquemus more than 60 years later is an interesting point that shows how the sensibility representing French fashion is changing with the times.