Held at Sydney's Carriageworks, the show was slick, well-choreographed, and enlivened with lots of pumping music. Before the show, there was a red carpet photo wall. The front row was full of local celebrities, who went away with gift bags of Byron Bay cookies and Vogue magazine.

Not so different from most Australian Fashion Week fashion parades, except that in this case, fifty-six of the models were pilots – captains and first officers – of Qantas planes. (Who is flying the planes this morning? we all wondered).

It was a case of from the airport runway to the fashion runway.

Most of the pilots seemed completely chuffed to be in the limelight. A few looked a little awkward and sheepish at first but warmed up to the audience's cheers. The female pilots seemed to enjoy it the most. They marched proudly. At last, they were wearing uniforms that suited the female body, not the unflattering, boxy modified men's uniforms they'd been donning since Qantas's Sharelle Quinn and Ann Bennett became Australia's first international female pilots in 1985.

Airlines periodically freshen their cabin crew uniforms and make a bit of a fuss about it, but it's unusual for pilots' uniforms to be celebrated so lavishly. How many variations can you make on what is a standard uniform – dark suit, white shirt, cap and a bit of braid? There's a formality required that isn't exactly fashion forward.

Enter Martin Grant, the Paris-based Australian designer who in 2013 launched the distinctive new cabin crew uniforms with red and fuchsia striped sleeves. I've known Martin since he was an emerging designer in Melbourne in the 1980s and visited his Paris ateliers (the first boutique was tucked away behind M. Andre's barber shop in the Marais) on several occasions.

He's known for his superb tailoring and this is what stands out with the new uniforms. The female pilots, in particular, now have neatly defined waists and comfortable slim-line pants. Gone are the double pockets on the breasts, which the women particularly disliked, replaced by a single pocket for pens.

Martin met with more than 50 captains and first officers, male and female, and spent several hours in simulators of at least three different aircraft types to understand the pilots' working conditions.

The biggest talking point of the parade was the unisex white-topped caps, which recall the nautical caps worn in the 1930s by the original flying boat captains. Sprigs of golden wattle, Australia's national flower, are embroidered on the hat peaks. Until now, the gold embroidery on the hats has been known as "scrambled eggs" because that's what the pilots thought it looked like.

The uniforms will be introduced by the end of 2016 and will use 30,000 metres of lightweight Pure Australian Merino Wool suiting, plus 30,000 metres of shirting fabrics in a blend with Australian cotton. Approximately 5000 metres of gold braiding will provide the stripes on the hat, cuffs and epaulettes, with 4 kilograms of gold bullion thread sewn into the hat and wing badges.

I think the pilots deserve every millimetre of that gold braid.

Watching the pilot models on the runway and the standing ovation they received from the audience, I pondered how respected pilots are as a profession, the Qantas pilots in particular.

This is one of the world's most high-pressure jobs, with awful consequences for human error. I'm in awe of someone who seriously carries the responsibility for 150-plus lives with every take off.

Without getting all misty-eyed about it, as our Prime Minister said on another matter, I don't think I'm alone in feeling a lump in my throat when the Qantas captain makes his address before take off. Double lumps if it's a woman.

Qantas doesn't have the only well-trained experts in the air, but you'd be forgiven for thinking the Qantas captains are demi-gods, with their storied prowess in averting disasters, from near-misses over Adelaide to mid-air engine explosions over Singapore. They'd make good characters in a Marvel comic book: Captain Qantas: Conquest of LAX or similar.

Flying can be an emotional experience, even if you're cool about being 10,000 metres above the ground. A safe pair of hands is never more important. Which is why I think there's a lot of transference of love to these Masters of the Universe.

And why a comfortable and smart new uniform is something to celebrate.