between star trek discovery picard lower decks and other exciting shows on the horizon
it's a great time to be a star trek fan and soon fans will have a chance to own a
part of the star trek universe too recently we stopped by prop store where a large collection
of costumes from star trek discovery were being organized and prepared for an upcoming auction
and before these uniforms and props get into the hands of fans we got to get up close with these
costumes and learn as much as we could about the nuances of their design and fabrication
so megan thank you so much for having us here you're welcome megan yeah absolutely megan hensley
here is the director of asset management but that's a that's a very like bureaucratic way of
saying you get to handle and organize and manage incredible costumes yes i do i am very lucky to be
able to put a hands-on approach to all of these and creating the auctions that are coming up
and be able to feel and taste and smell everything that comes into prop store so that's a fan's dream
because right now we're in front of some real used costumes hero costumes from season one
and two of star trek discovery uh and you guys in partnership with cbs you guys are gonna be
allowing fans to purchase how many costumes here we're talking about we are looking about
over 200 lots um and there are various numbers of costumes in those lots too of course the primary
and principal actors we've got one or two um each and then a plethora of background which is great
we have everything from the standard uniform to mirror universe to klingon and enterprise so
we have everything and everybody's going to be so excited to see it so i'm excited
to show it as someone who's had to organize and get in contact with every one of these pieces i
thought it'd be a great chance for us to dive deep into the costume design of star trek discovery
okay pick your brain a little bit about what you've learned in managing these costumes and
insights that you have so let's start with that costume right next to you all right so this is
michael burnham's actual costume or one of them um this one actually has a little bit of a distressed
hole over here but it's in overall great shape it is the standard uniform that you see um and
this one is sciences division and they did all sorts of colors for uh to indicate the division
so you'll have the command as gold sciences as silver and operations as bronze and so as you guys
know as the fans know michael burnham did start as a command in command so she had a gold uniform
which we do have for sale um but this is her the one that she spends most the time in and something
that's so eye-catching about these uniforms and this design is the collar right collars are a
big thing in star trek and what they brought to discovery was this asymmetrical collar design yes
and it's very lovely it kind of folds over here and then it detaches right in the um the center
front there exactly and then you have this off centered zipper design which is really very unique
brain's a kind of a distinction to discovery that we all really adore so what type of fabric is
this this is a spandex fabric it's a blend but it was custom made for this production so you
can't actually get this anywhere else but here and the great thing about it is gersha phillips
the designer created this bonding or she worked with a company to create a bonding technique to
flat line this that provides that major structure for each actor to fit into this very very well so
they are all super custom fit to each actor even the background actors i think of like a spandex or
like a you know a poly blend jacket i would wear and you know as tight fit it is it kind of still
it bunches up right it does it's not as form-fitting as you want it in your head to be
and so to create structure in that material no easy task as well as the patterning no exactly
you have some fantastic pattern lines um to create that form fitting that's what this um
princess princess seam ser here does and then she keeps it going down through the pant which is very
lovely creates that very nice long lean line for each actor so and on that you have the federation
the delta right exactly so this is one of the um very unique things to discovery is that delta
and the rubberized print if you want me to talk about that a little bit yeah this was uh i would
say the cosplayers nightmare was this rubberized print um uh the deltas of course are the signature
and you can see the tiny deltas kind of um come out in some of the earlier or the remake films
2009 you saw the little deltas on the screen print so she brought those into this design really well
added a rubberized print then foiled it on top and that of course distinguishes the departments
um and that foiling technique was done in-house by hand by her creative team it was absolutely
amazing to see i think adam talks about this a lot we see this kind of evolution in costume
design with new technologies being available evolutions and screen printing so you see a lot
like superhero costumes have yes with some type of rubberized screen printing a lot of them do these
and repeating patterns on there but that adds dimensionality uh but this with the additional
the foiling yes gives like light reflectivity you know with the the brilliant lighting a lot
of depth a lot of depth you can see in the lines a lot of depth um all over the shoulder detail
everywhere she's got that really nailed down and uh and it creates just a nice uniform look
as a star trek fan one of the things we also pick out is like how the different uniforms are
distinguished for for rank for example right you know is it is it stripes on the wrist is it pips
on the collar oh wow you're very well versatile yeah how's it in discovery so in discovery of
course they do do some of their um on the badges which of course we don't have those but um on here
you can see this is the admiral's um costume she has um the stripes on here to indicate command
uh captain in particular you wouldn't see these and then as an admiral she they added these on the
sleeve caps so that was the indication of rank and of course everybody who is just a standard um uh
unit would just not have those on there and just be a clean look and that's gold because it's it's
gold it's kind of commander man yeah yeah exactly you mentioned the pants continue that line design
right the design so it creates a cohesiveness to it slimming look as well yeah these are also
custom pants they are and the patterning that she did um this nice little very piecemeal patterning
really pops out when you see it up close she brought in the zipper detail here it's it's
foiled as well which is really super hard to do but these were custom made for the production
and the zipper lines yes exactly the the top ones the asymmetrical ones the ones on the pants
and then of course you have this embroidery beautiful wave detail that you do with a
a spandex and a knit and it's really hard to do but they did all for every single costume that you
can see throughout even through the enterprise costumes you see this lovely detail and then a
lot of patchwork down here and that all of that gold goes all the way down to that hem
so absolutely amazing detail i love that pointing out that embroidery detail the horizontal line
for me it invokes a little bit of you know like star trek 2009 the motorcycle style pants they had
which had that kind of on the knee line and you know with every star trek designer star trek show
designer wants to do their own thing but also have references exactly and the little nods to what's
been done i do believe that uh gersha phillips had access to all of the original things from
tos tng um 2009 beyond beyond is actually a very good um comparison when you take a look
at the the design lines you can see a little bit of a nod to that movie it's absolutely beautiful
so great combination something of course big part of the star trek universe is the mirror universe
which they dove into head first in season one of discovery exactly and season two as well
so uh this is tilly's uniform yeah very popular um uh very popular character as you know this
is her uniform unfortunately we do not have the buckle there but we were able to put the rest of
her uniform together um it is a jumpsuit like all of the mirror uniforms they just decided
to go ahead and go with the jumpsuit which you did see a little bit of that in the discovery universe
as well um so they took that design they did not include the deltas but they did really um uh mix
up the the fabrics and the materials for this one so you have your um rubberized and um armor
and belt and this is urethane and then you have leathers and you have that's what that is yeah you
have some rubber um fabrics up here which is very um indicative of the shoulders up here so they
kind of they kept to that same design but they added a little you know the oomph that you needed
for the mirror universe it's a darker timeline i love how it's broken up here too between the
shoulder and and yeah the material effects exactly a lot of materials in these one jump seats and
just absolutely beautiful work here very intricate these are all glued on individual pieces onto that
wow i know so it's a cast earthing piece but the piping and everything yeah they just had piece
together and they would design them create them right there you know cosplayers think
you know spending the hours that they're putting it's the same amount of work right
and they have to do this on a scale of hundreds of costumes yes they did wow yeah of course the the
higher the the principle the more detail that they got but uh so this one's uh this one's on sale for
um during the auction and then we've got some other armored pieces such as michael burnham
and then we have of course um the the chief and in command the empress i believe she's gone
um and her costume too so we have some great pieces from that mary universe i thought this
was a cool time to pull up the boots as well because the boots are also fully custom there's
a theme going on here it's not just you know we would google like chelsea boots or something for
classic you know science fiction boots but that's not the case here nope completely 100
custom-made for the show um they're super expensive but um one of the great little
details i love to show is that they did do the the same foiling same colors as the uniform and then
as you can see they added the little deltas and the difference you might want to take a closer
look right there you can see that the deltas point forward for the discovery timeline and then for
mirror universe they are pointing backwards so that's a subtle thing this is a subtle thing
but the other thing that that we are including in these and that the production gave to us is these
great mirror universe buttons that go right on top so they're stickers and they go right on top
of that so if you think that we're missing that we are not missing that those are there but we're
allowing the um the customer to go ahead and put them on themselves it's what works right i think
you know double-sided tape stickers it's how the calm badges are done in next generation it's just
a classic thing for tv production and you know and star trek a nice cheap but a great way to
reuse what they already have absolutely now i know for season two we also had the appearance of the
enterprise we did i'm gonna hand you those i've got a couple pieces to show you hold on one second
these are so cool look at the richness and color same design which is great because
they reused their patterning but um they did decide not to use the um the deltas on
this i think that was just kind of a let's progress into the classic tos colors style
the look so that you can see a natural progression between the uniforms and and even captain pike
mentions oh yes these are our spoofy new uniforms the very first episode so this one in particular
is not pike's as you can see it's a skirt so they introduced the skirt too which is a
great way to start to see that evolution and but they kept the stripes on the side um you can see
the details very very similar in the pant still that embroidery there that's there um and then
um as far as the the command we don't have it on here but they are the rubberized print still
it's just in the same color as this here so um very great nod the use of color is amazing
and of course we have our ranks this is a great nod also to tos because instead of
trying to do the ranks on the shoulders they went ahead and moved into the cuffs so you can see that
the ranks are there but these are foiled they're foiled exactly so they did use the same technique
um you don't you think that this would be an original so it was almost like they adopted the
foiling technique here and said well why don't we just go ahead and use it as a rank indicator for
enterprise so that's exactly what they did and it's absolutely gorgeous and to exist in the
same universe this is the same fabric as here it is the same fabric yes and specialty dyed and i
know that that creative team did a lot of research on the original colors of tos and they did a huge
nod to it the blues and the um the yellows and the reds just go straight from that um that era
that tos color scheme so and then it comes and very much complements the dark blue of discovery
yeah so when you see them on screen together it's a very nice cohesive mix i look at the
inside of the collar and these are all labeled right they're labeled for whether the actor or
the scene yeah this one says stunt right here um you mentioned that these costumes are tailored for
the the you know the principal actors yeah when they have extras how is you know how's the sizing
when you look at hundreds of these costumes what are you noticing in terms of how this production
and other television show productions organize sizing that's a good question um in my experience
production what they tend to do is they do basic blocks so you'll have your extra smalls extra
large or however size they went up to and then they would finish those pieces and then bring
them to the actor and custom make them custom bring them in tailor them to fit those exact
actors even the backgrounds got customers really they're just not off the rack they're not off
the rack no exactly so that's why you'll see a bunch of names in these and sometimes they'll see
extras um you know as an extreme and that was maybe possibly not even tailored or worn at
that point we do have a few of those to offer too so that's it's an interesting insight for
especially for collectors because for someone to pick this up yes you're going to want to
have it displayed on a mannequin but i imagine some people may want to try them on themselves
but no promises no promises are a wide range of sizes but they are all custom fit to them and
they are absolutely just beautiful pieces even if you just use them for mannequins that is so
cool megan thank you so much for diving deep into the world of star trek discovery costumes
with us uh there are hundreds of pieces in this auction and we'll be covering more of them as the
auction begins beginning of september september yeah september 2nd is when we start releasing the
catalog and you can take a look awesome and we'll have links to where you can find that information
in the description below but megan thank you so much you're welcome thanks for stopping by