On January 6, 1926, Luft Hansa, the forerunner to today’s German flag carrier, was formed. Three months to the day later, the airline operated its maiden flight from its Berlin-Tempelhof base, using a Junkers F 13.
Over the next 100 years, the airline has faced numerous challenges, not least the interruptions to its operations during World War II. However, since the re-establishment of the “second Lufthansa” in 1953, the carrier has grown to become one of the most recognisable brands in the world. The wider Lufthansa Group has become a powerhouse in aviation, swallowing up several major European flag carriers and investing in others.
For its 100th anniversary, Lufthansa’s motto is “We are the Journey,” celebrating all the people who have helped shape the company. In celebration of that motto, we take a look at the journey of Lufthansa’s cabin crew uniforms over the past century.
The Early Years
When the airline launched in 1926, its primary focus was on transporting mail and freight rather than passenger flights. When passengers did arrive, it was on the wealthiest who could afford the luxury, especially as the airline came about just three years before the global economic crash following the Great Depression, which subsequently led to the rise of the Nazi Party.
As with most cabin crew uniforms at the time, Lufthansa’s early outfits were heavily inspired by the military and designed for male crew members, as only men were hired. The look was simple yet functional: a grey jacket with a white shirt.
By September 1934, Luft Hansa had carried one million passengers. The airline was a success and had bold expansion plans, including the introduction of female cabin crew. This led to the launch in 1938 of advertisements for a four-week flight attendant training course at the airline’s headquarters. However, with the outbreak of war on September 1, 1939, the airline’s ambitions became inextricably linked to the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) and many passenger services were cut.
A New Lufthansa
Following the end of hostilities, Allied Forces seized all of the Luftwaffe’s aircraft, and the limited operations of Luft Hansa were shut down. The modern-day Lufthansa was launched on January 6, 1953, with its first flights taking place on April 1, 1955, when two Convair 340s departed simultaneously from Hamburg and Munich on reciprocal domestic flights.
Initially, many of the staff were employees of the former flag carrier. Initial uniforms for its staff were produced by the German clothing manufacturer Jobis and introduced in 1955. The look included midi-dresses, hats, and gloves, offering an innovative and sophisticated uniformity across its flights. Hair was also carefully controlled as the airline later described in a social media post, “curls, and enough hairspray to keep every hair in place when standing in front of a propeller.”
By the early 1960s, Lufthansa was growing rapidly, moving away from its post-war shadow and becoming one of the world’s most respected airlines. To mark the shift, the airline commissioned designer Otl Aicher and his team at the Ulm School of Design (HfG Ulm) to build a comprehensive corporate design system for how Lufthansa should look around the world, including its crane logo usage, typography, colour schemes, as well as a new uniform for its staff.
Despite retaining post-war respectability, the new outfits were a departure from earlier, more traditional styles toward ones that reflected contemporary fashion trends and the professional image the carrier wanted to portray. With its restrained blues and neutral colours, the look combined practical tailoring with refined, feminine silhouettes typical of the period, which featured knee-length skirts, structured jackets, coordinated scarves, and structured caps.
Bold and Beautiful
The seventies marked a bold evolution in terms of the carrier’s crew uniforms. Bold colours, with Lufthansa’s signature blue and yellow prominently featured, offered brand identity visibility, while functional tailoring was paired with them.
The now-iconic, made-to-measure look, created by the then-up-and-coming Berlin couturier Werner Machnik, featured knee-length dresses or skirt suits with gold buttons. Crew members also wore coordinated scarves and hats all in bright colours, making the crew stand out from the crowd in airports around the world.
Machnik later said that he had approached the uniform update as a fashion design challenge, rather than the creation of corporate clothing, aligning the carrier with a broader 1970s trend in which airlines collaborated with recognised designers to project prestige and modern taste. Indeed, so iconic was the look that it lasted for the majority of the 1970s.
Big Business
While the early 1970s had been all about designer outfits for its crew members, the 1980s focused on corporate attire. Lufthansa was now a large international airline, operating more aircraft types to varied climates and with more crew bases. Therefore, the airline needed a mass-produced, durable uniform to ensure consistency among its employees.
Instead of hiring a fashion house to develop a new look, Lufthansa chose an internally managed, corporate-design-led process. Design decisions were made by the airline’s corporate identity and operations teams, often with input from external manufacturers, but without public credit to an individual designer.
The outcome was conformity across its crews. However, this didn’t mean a return to blandness. Instead, Lufthansa distilled Machnik’s visual language, deep blue dominance, controlled yellow accents, and clean tailoring into a more modular, system-based wardrobe.
Structured jackets, standardised cuts, and clearly defined accessories helped achieve the airline’s focus on role legibility, with rank, department, and function needed to be immediately readable—borrowing the authority of Machnik’s designs while replacing fashion expression with corporate clarity.
A Look That Defined An Airline
The more standardised look of the 1980s proved popular, with the lessons learned from the Machnik era translated into a long-term corporate uniform strategy that defined the airline for decades. Indeed, despite some tweaks during the 1990s with new accessories, such as updated scarves and blouses, it wasn’t until 2002 that Lufthansa crews wore a fully redesigned uniform.
As the carrier entered the new millennium, work began on a broader brand refresh, aimed at presenting Lufthansa as a modern, premium global airline rather than a purely functional flag carrier.
Unlike the internally developed uniforms of the 1980s, the early-2000s redesign was shaped by external fashion and tailoring expertise, with women’s designs associated with the German fashion house Strenesse and men’s wear developed with several specialist men’s wear partners.
Yellow and blue remained the key colours. Deep navy tailoring offered a slimmer, more contemporary cut, with cleaner lines and lighter fabrics compared to the heavier 80s and 90s silhouettes. Yellow accents were added throughout, including scarves, ties and a subtle trim. The uniform was created as a modular wardrobe allowing skirts, trousers, dresses, vests, and jackets with gold buttons to be combined.
Throughout the 2010s, Lufthansa largely retained the 2002 uniform concept, working with textile experts to make incremental refinements rather than wholesale changes. This included improved fabrics, expanded fit and sizing options and Minor tailoring updates to keep silhouettes contemporary without altering the core look.
The Next Chapter
In August 2025, Lufthansa announced it was developing a new uniform in collaboration with German fashion house Hugo Boss. The pair had reportedly been working together for some time, which meant that wearer trials of the new look could begin on September 1, 2025.
These trials have involved just a small number of employees from various areas of the business at both its Frankfurt and Munich bases. Once completed, feedback will be gathered on comfort, fit, wearability, and function in their respective roles, whether on the ground or in the air. A spokesperson for the carrier also said that “particular attention” would be paid to the sustainability of the fabrics and materials.
However, Lufthansa has not committed to a firm full rollout date, and reporting notes the airline has left the form and timing of the eventual introduction open—presumably waiting for trial results and any follow-on iterations.
Oktoberfest Outfits
For many years, Lufthansa crews have worn special Bavarian “Tracht” uniforms during Munich’s Oktoberfest season. The earliest documented use of traditional Bavarian attire by Lufthansa dates back to 1957, when the airline dressed crew members in dirndls during Oktoberfest. At the time, this was a relatively informal gesture, intended to reflect Bavarian hospitality and to connect the airline more visibly with Munich, which was already an important location in Lufthansa’s network.
The tradition later fell out of regular use, but it was formally revived and institutionalised in 2006. On September 1 2006, Lufthansa launched what became known as the modern “Trachtencrew” concept with a high-profile long-haul flight from Munich to New York staffed by cabin crew wearing traditional Bavarian costume. From that point on, Oktoberfest Trachten flights became an annual feature of the airline’s seasonal operations.
Unlike Lufthansa’s standard uniforms, the Oktoberfest outfits are not created internally. Instead, the airline works with specialist Bavarian costume makers, most notably Angermaier Trachten, a Munich-based company known for high-quality traditional clothing. The garments are custom-made for Lufthansa, ensuring authenticity while also meeting aviation safety and comfort requirements.
The designs are carefully adapted to reflect Lufthansa’s corporate identity. Women typically wear dirndls in dark blue and grey tones, often with subtle yellow accents that reference Lufthansa’s brand colours. Male crew members wear lederhosen with coordinating vests made from matching fabrics. In recent years, Lufthansa has also highlighted the use of OEKO-TEX Standard 100–certified materials, underscoring a growing emphasis on sustainability and responsible sourcing.
Be sure to tell us which of Lufthansa’s looks are your favourites, and for more flight attendant fashion, check out our Style in the Aisles pages!
© Confessions of a Trolley Dolly by Dan Air