In Star Trek: Into Darkness, the cadets had grey uniforms like shown below.

Star Trek Into Darkness Uniforms

I love the coat styles, princess seams and all. However, I wanted to have this sort of as a dress shirt, and add some fashion statements to the otherwise bland grey outfit. I wanted to turn this into fashion rather than make it as a cosplay (or costume), in other words. That’s my gig with nerd and geek stuff. I want to turn it into everyday wear, cause there is a lot of nice fashion in nerd and geek shows. Those characters often look great due to their wardrobe as much as anything else! Also, to wear this during a summer parade, I couldn’t handle anything close to a coat in warmth.

Fortunately for me, a few months ago, I found some heavy stretchy cotton, probably 3% spandex, in grey with a little shine to it, and on discount for just $1.50 a metre! I jumped on it. I made a dress shirt version of the outfit, except that on the back, instead of another set of princess seams, I had a Trek insignia cut out filled with nebula spandex. It was the fashion I wanted to add while making the cosplay on the front side. What came out is shown below.

My Trek Fashion Outfit

The nebula spandex was fused to a medium interface to make a tad heavier than the grey heavy spandex cotton. I sewed the nebula Trek logo shape the hole, then put double thin bias tape over the edge to make it look like a window frame into space. The bias tape was put on in 4 pieces, zig zag stitching at the points on the shape where there was overlap of bias tape. I only had the princess seams on the front, not front and back, due to that nebula window.

This grey uniform is not yet well known from my test marching in a big Natal Day parade with the Hal-Con float that had all kinds of sci-fi, fantasy, games and anime characters. I was right where I should have belonged, in other words. However, once I went past and they saw the Trek shaped back with nebulous space in the middle, a lot of people got it. I could hear it walking past when people finally realized what it was, or at least the Star Trek association. 🙂

I will now make some dress shirts like this in the coming weeks, without the big Trek shaped insignia on the back or comm badge. What I will do differently is colour block with some interesting colour combinations, likely asymmetric like maybe navy blue on the outside, white on one side inside the princess seams and orange on the otherwise. We’ll see, but for now, I can even wear this outfit without the comm badge as casual wear to parties or every day life… maybe even casual day at work!