After nearly eight long years, United Airlines has finally rolled out its new designer uniform collection as tens of thousands of flight attendants and other customer-facing staff transition to the news threads on Wednesday.
Beset with problems, controversy, and years-long delays, May 28, 2025, is the date that United has ordered crew members to start wearing their Tracy Reese and Brooks Brothers-designed uniforms.
What passengers will see is light years away from what Reese had initially proposed with super modern Star Trek-inspired designs that were revealed in secret meetings in May 2018, only to then be quickly dropped.
In fact, this wasn’t the only major design change–United was bold enough to publicly reveal photos of the second iteration of the designs, only for the carrier to be inundated with complaints from flight attendants.
Soon, more changes were announced, but before the project could move on to fruition, COVID-19 happened in early 2020, and work on the new uniform was quickly shelved as the aviation industry was upended by travel restrictions and stay-at-home orders.
It would be over three years until we got an update on the uniform project from United, and when it finally arrived in May 2023, the airline had made yet more major design changes–this would not, however, be the last changes we saw.
By May 2024, United had finally settled on its final design. In fact, so sure was the airline that this one would stick that it released its latest safety video with flight attendants wearing the new uniform even though no date had yet been set for a wider rollout.
It would take a full 12 months for that to come after countless hours of wearer tests and niggling problems that continue to this day.
Despite a number of fit issues, however, flight attendants will be wearing the new uniform from May 28. Well, the majority of flight attendants will be–crew members who are overseas on May 28, and those who started a multi-day trip before this date will continue to wear the old uniform until they get back to base.
United has warned flight attendants that they’ll be clamping down on uniform compliance in the coming weeks, with managers making sure that skirts are worn at the knee, compliant footwear is worn, and that company-issued Tumi hand luggage is being used.
Timeline: The long road to United’s new uniform rollout
August 2017
United announces new uniform project with Brooks Brothers, Tracy Reese and workwear brand, Carhartt.
The project also involves a partnership with luxury luggage brand Tumi which will supply rollerboard bags for flight attendants.
May 2018
Images leaked of United’s proposed new uniform
Flight attendants react in horro to United’s ‘Star Trek’ inspired uniform design.
January 2019
United unveils a reworked version of the new uniform designs
This time, United made its designs public, although the reaction from employees was still lukewarm at best.
May 2023
United’s new uniform project is back on track
After a three-year pause, United releases new photos of its upcoming uniform and there are yet more changes.
May 2024
United releases its latest safety video featuring the new uniform
There’s still no sign of when the uniform will be rolled out but United releases its latest safety video feating the new threads… and more changes have been made.
