Poll Personal Opinion on the Skant Uniforms?
- Thread starter Devilpogostick
- Start date
Togas and robes reach much farther down than skants do. Togas reach at least calf-length, sometimes ankle-length, and robes reach the floor.
I'm pro-skant.
I guarantee there are living, thriving cultures today in which men wear skirts, loincloths or the like that are noticeably shorter than calf-length.
Kor
Roman soldiers and workers wore tunics that were mid-thigh.
A tunic is a unisex garment that reaches from the shoulders to anywhere from mid-thigh down to the ankles.
A tunic is a unisex garment that reaches from the shoulders to anywhere from mid-thigh down to the ankles.
They wore tunics. Tunics and skirts are not the same.
Tunics could vary in length, from the thighs to somewhere above the ankles. The skant, if any of the TNG crew wearing one were dropped off in Rome, would be considered a tunic.
Perhaps, but the skant flares like a feminine miniskirt from the 1960's, not ancient Rome. The formal Starfleet uniform is a more what I think of when I hear the word tunic. It is more unisex as per modern aesthetics:
You can call them all tunics, but I'm not convinced the skant isn't also a minskirt. The formal tunic is unisex and the skant is feminine as per the modern North American culture from which Starfleet inherits.
You can call them all tunics, but I'm not convinced the skant isn't also a minskirt. The formal tunic is unisex and the skant is feminine as per the modern North American culture from which Starfleet inherits.
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Think of it this way (as we were taught to in the Society for Creative Anachronism, when making our medieval garb): A tunic is basically a T-shirt. From there it's only a matter of what length it is, what fabrics and trims are used, what kind of sleeves it has, and how it's cut.
Strictly speaking, a skirt is a garment whose top is at the waist, not the upper body, and skirts can range from very short to floor-length (or longer).
A tunic covers the upper part of the body like a T-shirt does, and the length varies. It may or may not have a belt at the waist.
Whether the bottom is flared or not doesn't matter.
Except that the T shirt is a product of the nineteenth century US Navy uniform - so is not technically a suitable standard on which to define the ancient, multi-cultural tunic. Your point that tunics and skirts not being the same is of course accurate, however, the skant looks like a skirt and the formal uniform does not. The flaring I referred to of the skant enhances the feminine-gender fashion sexuality, just like a modern, commonly-known miniskirt would; whereas the looser-fitting flaring of the formal uniform does not. I wasn't inferring that the flaring itself is the defining characteristic. Yes, you could call them both tunics. But the divergence is in the gender characteristics of modern fashion.
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It doesn't matter that they weren't called T-shirts until modern times. But that's still basically what a tunic is.
The TNG skant looks like a simple dress, which in turn has the basic characteristics of a tunic. Women wore those too, although of course that's not what they were called.
Ah, TrekBBS, where skant vs skirts and yellow vs. green can be rigerously held.
Yes. Let's let go of the finer nitpicky technical points of tailoring terminology and and get back to discussing our actual opinions of how those things look. I believe that was the point of the thread.
No matter what they may be called exactly, there is much historical precedence for males to wear some kind of skirt-like, kilt-like or robe-like garment of various lengths without any trousers underneath, whether it happens to be part of a single piece that starts at the shoulders, or a separate garment of its own, or whatever.
Kor
No matter what they may be called exactly, there is much historical precedence for males to wear some kind of skirt-like, kilt-like or robe-like garment of various lengths without any trousers underneath, whether it happens to be part of a single piece that starts at the shoulders, or a separate garment of its own, or whatever.
Kor
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Okay, you want an opinion? They look stupid on the men, and scanty and unprofessional on the women. They are completely impractical for doing anything outdoors that requires having any protection for the body, and wtf do the crew wear underneath? Shorts, like in TOS, or skimpy underwear like in nuTrek?
The dress I wore for my first day of school in September 1969 was basically a child-sized skant (same shape, same lines), although mine was orange with lace trim. They look okay on a 6-year-old. They just look dumb on adults.
I imagine it may be an indoor outfit. Women and men have been doing big important things in similar outfits for thousands of years. And if it's a cultural concession, it doesn't have to make sense from a surrounding environment standpoint. At the end of the day, Worf might have a big sweat line along his sash, or little bumps where it digs into his skin when he moves, but he's willing to tough it out.
As long as there's pants when you need them, you don't wear them when you don't - like you don't wear a jacket when it's 40 degrees Celsius. Just enough to be dressed decently.
My personal opinion is just that the skant looks silly and unprofessional. Wearing something like that OFF duty is one thing (I imagine civilian clothing in Trek's time would be all over the proverbial map), but wearing it ON duty would be rather dignity-shattering, kind of like a US Navy Captain wearing a Teletubby costume on the bridge, or a Fortune 500 CEO attending a board meeting in a tutu.
Skants as a military uniform make even less sense than, for example, the final scene of Gattaca, where the crew of a spaceship is seen wearing everyday business suits...
And yes, I'm well aware that fashions change over the centuries. But if there ever comes a time where stuff like this becomes commonplace in the military, I'll be proud to be dead by then.
Edit: I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if the use of the skant was considered strictly optional, a matter of personal preference. I'm fairly sure that if I were in Starfleet and was ordered to wear one, however, I'd be embarrassed as hell. That's something I'd risk court-martial to avoid doing.
Skants as a military uniform make even less sense than, for example, the final scene of Gattaca, where the crew of a spaceship is seen wearing everyday business suits...
And yes, I'm well aware that fashions change over the centuries. But if there ever comes a time where stuff like this becomes commonplace in the military, I'll be proud to be dead by then.
Edit: I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if the use of the skant was considered strictly optional, a matter of personal preference. I'm fairly sure that if I were in Starfleet and was ordered to wear one, however, I'd be embarrassed as hell. That's something I'd risk court-martial to avoid doing.
I found the skant thing extremely silly and am quite glad they swiftly abandoned that idea.
Can anyone here honestly say they would have wanted to see Captain Picard, Riker or Worf wearing skants in some episodes?
Can anyone here honestly say they would have wanted to see Captain Picard, Riker or Worf wearing skants in some episodes?
I've already seen Patrick Stewart in a Roman tunic and he looked pretty good in it. But it wouldn't look good on a starship.
Riker would have to adjust his... posture.
I was always given to that very impression, & while I think it's fully asinine for application as any kind of work uniform, I can see many people on the ship opting for it in a less active role, for example Troi in being pretty much relegated to just being an advisor or a social worker with an office. It never made much sense for Yar as CoS to be wearing one, in the pilot, but I could definitely see some of the sickbay staff choosing to wear it. Even in some surgical settings, there's occasionally an option to wear a skirt
