Since Star Trek first made its way to the big screen, its costume design has veered away from the classic color-coded uniforms in favor of experiments with red double-breasted uniforms and unfortunate flesh-colored jumpsuits. But for the 2009 J.J Abrams Star Trek reboot and its recently released sequel, Into Darkness, costume designer Michael Kaplan helped move the sartorial stylings of the Enterprise crew forwards by looking backwards–at the trusty old red, blue, and gold. It’s a comfortingly familiar detail amongst Abrams’ trademark lens flare and glowing spaceship interiors: a conscious chromatic nod to the vintage style of the original costumes.
“I wanted the film based in the ‘60s,” Kaplan told Wired. “Not literally the ‘60s, but I wanted my thinking to be grounded in the concept of the original Star Trek, almost like an homage…. I had a lot of books in my library that I’d consult: [André] Courrèges [inventor of the mini-skirt], designers like that. To keep things rooted in that, even if when you look at the movie, you don’t say, ‘Hey, this is the early 1960s.’”
In a different film the female officers’ mini-dress uniforms might have seemed like a gratuitous anachronism, but the larger framework of 1960s styling (towering, stylized beehive hair on some of the extras; Uhura’s cat-eye eyeliner) makes them work. It helps, too, that, the flimsy color-coded uniform shirts no longer have to survive fight scenes. They’re treated more like officewear, and quickly swapped out for tougher gear.
“Now that we’re so far ahead in time from when the TV show was released, I felt that more sophistication was necessary,” Kaplan told Wired. “In the past, [the crew] were all seen to wear their uniform when beamed to other ships and going to other planets. I felt like it was time they had something to travel in, so I created these shuttle suits. They’re almost like a jumpsuit, worn over their uniforms and with little plastic windows so you can see the color of the uniform.”
For the full article, click here.
