I’m finally catching up on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and loving it. I love what the costume and set designers did in redesigning the ship and uniforms of the original Star Trek for modern television. There really is a sense of similarity with the original series without looking campy or dated.
There’s something oddly familiar about these outfits, though. Where have I seen this particular cut before?
Ain’t that something? It’s almost the same cut of jacket! Well, if I know how to make the jacket on the right, and I do, then it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch to figure out the jacket on the left. It seems like the first thing to do, then, is to figure out the differences between the Strange New Worlds uniforms and those from The Orville.
The incredible blog Making It Sew has managed to get up close photos of screen used costumes, which I’ll compare to the New Horizons uniforms. I want to see if my existing pattern can be modified to match.
Designers Bernadette Croft and Gersha Phillips took very obvious inspiration from the original Star Trek in the design of the uniform, naturally, as it is something of a prequel. There are also some similarities to the 2009 reboot film and Star Trek: Beyond in the final version.
Noticeably, there’s some strong influence in the use of division insignia screen printed onto the secondary fabric, but also in the modified cut. Speaking of which, here’s the first big difference between the Strange New Worlds and Orville uniforms.
Shoulder & Yoke
Strange New Worlds modified the original raglan sleeve into a two part sleeve with a separate yoke. The upper sleeve and yoke use the patterned material. Let’s have a close look at that and the Orville uniform yoke and sleeve.
The Strange New Worlds yoke looks similar in size to the New Horizons yoke, though a single piece, rather than three pieces. The enlisted variant sported by Chief Kyle above matches Charly’s jacket quite closely, which is interesting to note as well.
Sleeves & Cuffs
There’s another difference, though, sleeve seams end at the yoke, rather than the princess seam along the front. So the lower sleeve must be larger and the upper sleeve on the Strange New Worlds uniform than on the Orville uniform.
The sleeves end very differently. Where the Orville sleeves have a padded, angular piece without a visible separate cuff, the Strange New World sleeves end in what looks like like a minimalist shit cuff. Both have have a look that’s a bit similar to an Argyle cuff, which is quite interesting.
The Strange New Worlds sleeve looks like a three-part sleeve, with a front and back part as well as an underarm piece in the two closeups below. It narrows at the cuff to follow the same lines as a two-part sleeve.
Body Sides
Taking another look at Una and Talla above shows another difference between the two jackets, the seams joining the front and front-side pieces. The Orville jacket has rounded seams at both the back and front sides. The Strange New Worlds jacket has straight seams at the front with a curved side-back seam. One looks like princess seams at the front, the other bust darts.
Unlike the Orville side, the Strange New Worlds jacket has a much more traditional flank, with separate side-front and side-back pieces. The right hand photo also suggests that there might be a small pocket in the side seam.
Body & Collar
Strange New Worlds features a couple of uniform variants, with different collar and closure styles. The left hand is the famous skant variant for this period, it only appears on the women’s uniform. This version has a zip-front and Mandarin collar. The right hand is a pullover tunic with a v-neck collar.
Unlike the Orville jackets, the back panel (and front, for the tunic) is cut on the fold rather than having a center seam/closure. The tunic is fairly form-fitting, so it’s probably made from a stretch fabric. Likely the same material used for the skant.
There’s also medical lab-coat variant and jumpsuit variants, plus the jackets that appeared in Discovery.
The differences between the Strange New Worlds tunic and the Orville jacket are subtle, but I’m not sure if it will be possible to adapt my existing pattern. It’ll take some more drafting and draping to find out. Let’s have a look, hopefully in time for the holidays, maybe it’ll make a good gift.
