Delta Air Lines has confirmed that it is slowly retiring its ‘Passport Plum’ uniform collection and is no longer producing garments like the famous Zac Posen-designed flight attendant dress in the standout colorway.
Passport Plum was first unveiled to the world in 2016 as part of a “wholly-reimagined mix of colors” dreamt up by Posen. The dark aubergine color featured on a wide variety of uniform items, including a V-neck dress worn by customer service agents and a crew neck sweater for male flight attendants.
By the point that Delta was ready to roll out its Posen-designed uniform two years later, the colorway was so in vogue that Pantone heralded a strikingly similar hue as its color of the year 2018.
But nearly six years later, Delta’s “fashion-forward statement”, as the airline’s chief marketing officer Tim Mapes described Passport Plum is now being discontinued.
“Delta is continuing to evolve our uniform program, and we will gradually introduce new uniform pieces and eventually new colors into the Delta Uniform collection,” a spokesperson for the Atlanta-based carrier confirmed earlier this week.
“We are no longer producing Passport Plum garments, though it will remain an important part of our color palette until new pieces are introduced.”
Evidence of Delta’s shift away from the brightness of Passport Plum can be witnessed in the carrier’s latest safety video, which features a flight attendant wearing a gunmetal gray dress – a relatively new design for the airline.
Passport Plum was chosen as it represented a combination of Delta’s traditional red and blue colors, although the airline didn’t explain why the skin tone complementing color was slowly being discontinued.
Following the introduction of Delta’s Passport Plum uniform in 2018, the airline started to receive complaints of allergic reactions to the uniform and eventually, Delta allowed flight attendants to swap out the iconic dress for their own off-the-rack clothes.
By 2021, the situation had become so dire that around half of Delta’s flight attendants were wearing their own clothes to work.
The off-the-rack ‘black and white uniform’ as it was dubbed, was banned last May after Delta introduced new uniform items made out of Oeko-Tex standard 100 fabric.
The grey uniforms were introduced in response to the allergy complaints, so it’s not a surprised that the Passport Plum uniforms were being phased out.
Just like Southwest, these uniforms are made so cheaply and with so many cancer causing chemicals. So very sad how billion dollar airlines care so little about our long term health. Cintas is going DOWN!!
Maybe delta needs to focus on actually flying people where they need to go in a timely manner instead of silly outfit issues????
The “silly outfit issues” were making their employees sick, Kimberly. Read the article. Maybe delta should focus on keeping their employees healthy, so the employees can focus on flying people where they need to go in a timely manner?????
It is about time, this uniform was not something that people would compliment at all, it’s time to get back to the blue and red uniforms…
“Skin tone complementing”??? How is EGGPLANT 🍆 purple complementing to any skin tone! Time to go back to the CLASSIC and ELEGANT navy, white and red, Delta’s traditional colors, colors that match their aircraft livery! The people who chose the horrid, night club eggplant and the horrid, dismal, hotel bellhop grey should forever be excluded from any uniform decisions!!!
Am sick to death of navy blue, navy blue, navy blue. Refreshing when the Virgin Air folks amble through the terminal. I wholly endorse the grey.