Featured Essays Star Trek: Strange New Worlds The Fashion of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Tells a Far Deeper Story Than You Think And yes, this is about makeup and hair and skirted uniforms. By Emmet Asher-Perrin | Published on August 25, 2026 Image: Jan Thijs/Paramount+ Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Jan Thijs/Paramount+ You know one thing about filmed media that always drives me up the wall? More often than not, the concept of personal (or even cultural) style goes ignored. Unless you’re watching a film centered on the subject (The Devil Wears Prada, I Love Boosters) or on teenage characters discovering their own style, it’s rare to find people in film or television discussing how they choose what to wear, or how much time it takes to coif their hair each day, or where their shoes came from. If the story itself isn’t about fashion or physical self-expression, you’re given the impression that everyone Just Wakes Up Like This. It’s ignoring one of the greatest aspects of worldbuilding and character conveyance available to the audience. How much time does Tony Stark spend shaping that signature goatee every day? Is there a room on the TARDIS devoted to washing and/or replicating 12 of the same outfit for the Doctor? Does being Gandalf the White mean that dirt just kinda bounces off the couture? Why don’t Jedi carry suitcases for pajamas?? What does this have to do with Star Trek? I’m so glad you asked. Image: Marni GrossmanParamount+ Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has been enjoyable for a number of reasons, but the show tends to get extra plaudits for the ways it has updated the aesthetics of The Original Series for a new century. Namely, it took a show that was famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) for putting its female officers in improbable beehives and miniskirts (with matching Starfleet-issue underwear) and its male officers in purpled eyeshadows and low-heeled boots, and recreated the feel of this environment with a slight air of added practicality. Strange New Worlds is a show replete with bright colors, winged eyeliner, the occasional bouffant hairdo (mostly on its captain), and short skirts that are now worn with Starfleet-issue trousers or leggings. The boots are not significantly heeled, but they are gorgeous. What bothers me is that the style choices the show makes are taken for granted in a fun ‘n flirty business-as-usual sense. That’s intentional, of course—each Trek series has a different look or aesthetic vibe, and because Strange New Worlds is a show that will lead into the events of TOS, it’s the perfect place to offload that design sensibility. It’s a built-in excuse to go “retro” without much need for explanation. And that’s a tragedy because that explanation isn’t an idle thing. What? You didn’t think that winged eyeliner just swooped into those lash lines out of nowhere, did you? Much as I love a layer of meta-commentary, there are far more interesting in-universe reasons as to why Strange New Worlds looks that way in does. The fact it’s never so much as mentioned within the show itself is weird decision on the part of its creative team—why would you go through all this trouble in creating a fictional universe with layered and complex histories and ignore how its artistic and cultural preferences shift in response to current events? So I’m gonna get into it, starting with the central issue that this stylistic shift springboards off of:  Strange New Worlds is a post-war narrative within its own fictional universe. Image: Paramount Though it was only meant to have lasted two years, the Federation-Klingon War that began with the Battle at the Binary Stars resulted in tens of thousands of Starfleet personnel killed in action, one third of the Federation’s fleet decimated, and one hundred million Federation citizen casualties. A horrifying conflict born from the Klingon Empire’s need to unite its people against a common threat so they might stop fighting each other, the war brought devastating losses to both sides and resulted in very little change, aside from minor shifts to territorial borders. It devastated many of the officers who had up-close experience in the fight (M’Benga and Chapel are riddled with PTSD from their time in it). Others were still likely to have lost friends and colleagues, and sport their share of survivor’s guilt—we know Pike has difficulty with the fact that the Enterprise was ordered to stay out of the conflict. And that wasn’t the only major threat the the Federation was able to send packing in a short period—directly after this war, the U.S.S. Discovery learned that Section 31’s threat assessment system (known as Control) had gone rogue and was soon to gain enough power to wipe out all sentient life in the galaxy. Discovery was able to neutralize this threat by sending the necessary information Control required to evolve far into the future. So in a three year span, the Federation not only managed to survive their first major war against another galactic power, but avert a galaxy-ending disaster. (Even if it was a disaster of their own making.) It’s no secret that wartime clothing choices tend toward austere practicality while post-war fashions embrace experimentation and vibrancy—economics and cultural sentiment affect everything at the societal level, from lipstick shades to grocery staples to cocktail preferences. After World War I, the roaring ‘20s led to the popularization of the flapper: smoking cigarettes, drinking gin, and rouging their knees. The prosperity the United States saw following World War II led to a longer period of growth, ushering in beatniks, greasers, and finally ‘60s counterculture, with mods and hippies and a sexual revolution. Image: Paramount If you watch interviews with actresses on Star Trek: The Original Series (which premiered in 1966), a lot of them loudly defend those skirted uniforms—for the period when the show premiered, younger women typically considered the miniskirt a sign of liberation and power, regardless of who enjoyed looking at them. That was the real-life context of the skirted uniform, at least in part (some women finding them empowering certainly doesn’t mean all women did, or lessen the impact of the executives and censors who okayed these costumes with an eye toward male viewer gratification). The uniform’s heeled boots for men were ripped from a style largely popularized by the Beatles, a hybrid Chelsea boot with a Cuban heel that was named after the band. The vibrancy of TOS can be put down to this cultural moment and the transition to color television. The changeover from black and white broadcasting revved up in the 1960s, which meant two things: showcasing color was all the rage, and makeup techniques to make actors more visible on black and white film had to be rapidly adjusted to serve a strange interim period. Ergo, the uniforms were bright because they could be, for the very first time. But the makeup was compensating for a point in time when plenty of TV sets were still black and white, meaning that it couldn’t be done away with, and men had to wear it similarly to women. Smoky eye shadow in abundance. Slay. (Image: Paramount) This is where I pause and to note that it is both disappointing and unrealistic for Strange New Worlds to avoid putting its male officers in pronounced makeup looks now and then, given this history. It’s not as though the show doesn’t acknowledge male style preferences (with Pike leading by utterly charming example), and there’s no reason to be weird about men wearing makeup a couple hundred years into the future when they already have throughout many points in history. Acknowledging that men are liable to go back to wearing cosmetics as an aspect of continuing societal change would be a heartening (and smart) message to send right now. Plus, it just looks so good. So those are the reasons for some of the stylistic choices made around The Original Series, yet within the narrative of the show, we’re given no reasons as to why things look the way they do. It mattered less at the start because Starfleet and the Federation existed in a vacuum with no more narrative attached—this was simply the way the show looked. Sixty years later, there’s centuries-worth of plotted story, missions and wars and major changes in allegiances, and the worldbuilding is robust enough to support historical context. Which means that The Original Series really shouldn’t look the way it does just because it was filmed in the 1960s. There should be in-universe information that backs the shift up. Image: Paramount Making the Federation-Klingon War a precursor to this shift is a sensible move, and to that end, we find that the Starfleet uniforms prior to and during that war were a far cry from the colorful array TOS and Strange New Worlds showcase. The first seasons of Star Trek: Discovery offer us uniforms that seem like a natural evolution of the blue naval-style coveralls that we see on Enterprise. They are paneled and piped with different metallic colors to denote the officer’s division: gold for command, silver for sciences, copper for operations. Unlike the early coveralls, they’re made of a fairly stiff fabric that looks starched and not particularly comfortable (in fact, Discovery’s cast frequently noted how difficult those uniforms were to wear over long shooting days). Not all officers are wearing those versions of the uniform, however: Appearances from Enterprise crew members in season two show us the earliest version of the colorful tunic ensembles that TOS uses, but still with a high, stiff collar and sharpened shoulders. This is clearly meant to create a tie between the version of the Starfleet uniform seen in Star Trek’s pilot “The Cage,” which had higher collars than the ones settled on for the series run. But again, the meta context is less important here than an attempt at textual solvency—the uniform still looks militant because Starfleet has been on war footing. They’re trying something new, but they haven’t landed on the final form, it seems. Image: Paramount Yet by the time we reach Strange New Worlds, officers on the Enterprise are sporting a uniform that hews much closer to the original uniforms, with more room to move, fewer angles in the silhouette, lower collars. Where officers on the Discovery wore comparatively little makeup and opted for simple hair styles, the Enterprise crew is now braiding, coiffing, spraying, buzzing, and twisting their hair into improbable shapes, and nearly every female officer wears thick eyeliner, including their no-nonsense security chief La’an. That, my friends, is a visible culture shift. Image: Paramount The Federation is entering a post-war era—one in which they believe this little alliance of theirs might have legs, as the saying goes. They successfully defended themselves against a formidable foe, which is bound to serve as a signal to others in the quadrant that their experiment is holding a full century in. This is an ideal place to set the tone for what dealings with the Federation are going to look like. So the change is really twofold; yes, Starfleet officers are embracing more exciting fashions and vibrant physical expression now that their safety has been reasserted, but perhaps even more relevant is the fact that Starfleet is making many deliberate choices about how they want to be viewed on a wider galactic stage. And they chose to look relaxed, colorful, and approachable. It’s a frankly genius way to recalibrate the meaning behind the Original Series uniform: When we look at this particular era, it is the least militant and structured of any Starfleet regalia shown on screen (yes, arguably even moreso than the TNG onesie, which screams essentially another version of a navy coverall and is mostly black). Their officers are decked out in cheerful primary colors, and the captain of their flagship is literally sculpting his hair with putty every morning. Rank signifiers are snazzy banding at the wrist, and the most basic version literally reads as… a tailored long-sleeved v-neck shirt and a pair of black pants. There’s a little padding at the shoulders, if you wanna quibble over details. And we’re learning, for the first time, that this was intentional. We are currently in a period when the Federation wanted the galaxy to know: Our ships are full of interesting nerds and we would like to be your friends. It’s worth acknowledging that this does cause them trouble on occasion—you can sense the lack of respect rolling off certain factions when the viewing screen snaps to and some guy in bright yellow is blithely explaining the United Federation of Planets like he’s sitting on a stack of brochures he just can’t wait to hand out. (And I’m not even touching on the fact that different alien cultures are bound to have different ideas around what colors represent, provided that they even see color in the same way.) But it’s a calculated risk at a point when Starfleet is intending to act as outreach as much as defense and exploratory arm. Image: Paramount This is why I’m salty about the fact that no one on Strange New Worlds ever discusses their sartorial preferences—there are so many layers to what’s happening here. I want to know who is excited about winged eyeliner getting popular again, and where folks get their hairstyling tips, and how everyone is feeling about having a nice low collar for a change. I want to see Spock try on eyeshadow for the first time, and wipe it off in a panic because it looks too different. I want to know if anyone feels silly in their new division colors and has been lobbying Starfleet Command to change the hue. And I definitely want to know that the entire crew of the Enterprise is aware of how this new era is meant to look from the outside: Here are our cheery little tunics and fancy-haired officers. We brought photon torpedoes just in case, but we also brought cake! (Our captain baked it from scratch, and he has too many opinions about flour-sifting technique, please do not ask.) We can probably solve your world-ending problems in an afternoon. Wanna hang out?[end-mark] The post The Fashion of <i>Star Trek: Strange New Worlds</i> Tells a Far Deeper Story Than You Think appeared first on Reactor.