20.02.2007

“LADYPLANE”: AN AEROPLANE FOR PARIS HILTON

Katja Sienkowiec (35), an industrial designer and the Hamburg agency SOLUTIONS Branding & Design Companies AG stage flying as a design and brand experience for female VIPs and business women.

You can´t fly more exclusively! Oil tycoons, medien tycoons and show-personalities jet around the world in their own luxury planes. A few hundred of these VIP-planes will operate worldwide – a growing market. Together with SOLUTIONS, the design and brand consulting agency, the industrial designer Katja Sienkowiec now presents the holistic concept “Ladyplane”, which makes air travel into a design and brand experience for business women.

New target-group: Female VIPs and business women
Up to now, the luxury planes segment has been characterised by men. High-end equipment and office ambience with noble materials dominate when special contractors such as market leader Lufthansa Technik build or rebuild the cabins of wide-bodied aircraft to the personal tastes of Saudi sheiks. “An individual design concept for women in a representative communicative social position is missing on the market”, explains the designer Katja Sienkowiec. The 35 year-old sees a promising niche by “feminising” the interiors and offering lifestyle-events,

The ideal platform for the concept is provided by wide-bodied aircraft such as the Airbus A 380. “Think big” is the motto when the beautiful and rich can afford a business aircraft for
several hundred million euros. Whoever clambers the “Ladyplane” gangway, enters a world above the clouds which breaks with all previous familiarities. “The design of the cabins is stylish, with organic forms and warm colours”, says Karel John Golta, board member and product development manager at SOLUTIONS. “The target group expects coherence right to the smallest detail.”

Brand experience above the clouds
Specialised services are to sell or charter the “Ladyplanes” concept or realise complete travel-programme events for their clients. A sketch-scene shows how such an event could look like: in the foyer the VIP-ladies are greeted by their host. From there on, they go into the gala which has enough space for 50 persons. During the flight to international season highlights – the Cannes Film Festival or the premiere of a Ballet in Moscow – a new jewellry collection is presented on stage, or stars such as Anna Netrebko appear. A restaurant with exquisite cooking, booths for relaxing and different theme-rooms as a place for meetings: a
room with a fireside, a sun deck, a water island. Real-time projections conjure up underwater ambience or wide horizons on the walls.

“The concept gives impulses for new, holistic flying services”, says the branding specialist Karel John Golta convincingly. A space for the unusual performance of brand-worlds and product-worlds is created, a “Third Place”. “In Ladyplane, luxurious products can use new opportunities to profile from their brand identity.”

The aircraft industry has been observing the concept, and the first discussions with possible partners have already taken place. Needless to say, Paris Hilton would love to hear about the news of an early realisation of the project.