24th Century Civilian Clothes

[LobsterAfternoon]

Why is it that every piece of civilian clothing seen in 24th century trek is horrible? Everyone wears horrible vests or horrible pajamas.

[Dream]

Yes, they always look awful.

Of course, the Trek characters would probably think our 21st century clothes look horrible!

[ZapBrannigan]

I strongly agree with the OP.

In TOS, civilians and Federation civil authorities wore suits that were awkward but not atrocious. But starting with the movies, the civies got sensationally bad.

In TMP, McCoy beams up in a sleazy, "Hey baby, I have a hot tub" track suit with a plunging neckline. His giant gold medallion is just icing on the '70s schlock, and worst of all you can see more of the doctor's private practice than you want to.

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/a.../tmphd0671.jpg

In ST-III and IV, Kirk wears a lady's red pantsuit with a delicate lavender blouse that makes me want to puke. The backstory in IV says that they spent months on Vulcan before heading for Earth. So, having made such a horrible fashion mistake in III, why couldn't they get better clothes for IV? Vulcan is not a desert island.

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/a...tsfshd0620.jpg

In III, Chekov's civilian look starts out with a big, white collar that was so bad, when a studio executive saw it in the dailies he ordered it yanked. So it just disappears in the film.

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/a...tsfshd0597.jpg

[ZapBrannigan]

I just remembered, in an interview about ST-V, Laurence Luckinbill said that for his Sybok costume, they originally gave him a filmy robe and expected him to wear it with nothing underneath, to avoid lines showing through. He complained ("You've got to give me something to wear").

The movies needed better costume design talent than they got, plain and simple.

[yousirname]

Fashion It So is a pretty funny blog that reviews TNG episodes from a fashion perspective. More entertaining than it probably sounds.

[Finn]

I wonder what people from 400 years ago would think of how we dress

[C.E. Evans]

It's horrible because they're clothes we wouldn't wear in our time and society. Federation fashion even became reminiscent of the 1960s during the mid 23rd-Century.

[Finn]

right

[The Mirrorball Man]

It's not just that they're ugly. These clothes and the people who wear them have no sense of style, they've got no design sense. It's as if fashion had ceased to exist. Compare TNG with a movie like The Fifth Element, where, whether we think the result looks nice or not, some effort was made to think about the future of fashion.

[Metryq]

The "One World" aspect of TREK is really a tyranny, and the horrible civilian clothes are a subtle pressure to urge people to enlist, Herbert.

[SchwEnt]

We all have our bad fashion times. We had the 1970s. Maybe the 2270s or 2380s were a similar era.

Maybe our heroes just lack any fashion sense and have no good judgment in their off-duty hours.

I'm no fashion expert, but what I find noticeable is the lack of general style in the future.

Today you might see a group of fellows in casual garb and it's similar... variations of jeans and tee-shirt, for example. Or another group wearing suits. Different colors and variations, but same general outfit.

It seems every time ST folks are in civvies, each one is in a wildly different style (one a leisure suit, another with flowing robes, another with pajamas, and so on).

In other words, we don't see O'Brien and Geordi both wearing the same kind of civvies the way two friends today would be seen both wearing tee-shirts and jeans together.

Whatever we see one fellow wearing, it can never be similar to what the next guy has on, the way people dress similarly to each other today.

Or something like this.

[sbk1234]

In all fairness, McCoy's civilian outfit in TWOK was pretty cool.

[The Wormhole]

Civilian clothes in the 24th century really are terrible. I guess the reason people join Starfleet is to get something decent to wear. 23rd century isn't much better, although most civilians we see throughout TOS are workers so the jumpsuits can be excused as practical clothing for their job. I don't mind McCoy's "space disco" look in TMP or any of the civilian outfits we see the characters wear in TSFS/TVH. Sure they may have a distinctive 70s/80s look to them, but that is the era they were made in.

[scotpens]

The Wormhole wrote:

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. . . I guess the reason people join Starfleet is to get something decent to wear. 23rd century isn't much better, although most civilians we see throughout TOS are workers so the jumpsuits can be excused as practical clothing for their job.

Elisha Cook Jr.'s outfit in "Court Martial" looked pretty cool.

SchwEnt wrote:

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. . . I'm no fashion expert, but what I find noticeable is the lack of general style in the future.

Today you might see a group of fellows in casual garb and it's similar... variations of jeans and tee-shirt, for example. Or another group wearing suits. Different colors and variations, but same general outfit.

Of course, just because everyone in the future is wearing similar fashions doesn't mean they can't look ridiculous.

[CaptainMurdock]

In terms of Civilian clothes, people of the 22nd Century got it right and in the centuries to come it went downhill.