Robert 'Bob' Blackman, costume designer, talks about Starfleet uniforms - [Voyager] and non-[Voyager]. Adapted from ST Monthly. Words by Robert Blackman are in this color. Click linked images to see them full-size.

[TOS: Season 3: Wink Of An Eye]	[TOS: Season 3: Spectre Of The Gun]
apart from differences in early episodes, notably [TOS: Where No Man Has Gone Before], the series opener, the same style of uniform was worn throughout the series, except that Captain Kirk sometimes wears two different styles of wrap-around top.

In addition to comfort, there was a plot purpose for the redesign. "The original one-piece uniform just kept looking too childlike to me. I kept thinking, 'This is a group of scientists that are out meeting people and they look a little too playful.' I tried to emulate the one-piece, thinking, 'We'll make it form-fit - we'll make it out of something that breathes, like wool, though not necessarily less warm, you don't feel like you're in a sauna suit. Then we'll see what we can do about this collar and the yoke and see if we can find a way to give it a little bit more formality.' So I started playing around with familiar military images, all done with drawing and, of course, Rick Berman. None of this is done on my own. I got into the Eisenhower jacket, and I just kept modifying it until it got to the shape that we are familiar with. Gates [Gates McFadden plays Dr Beverly Crusher] has a lot of dance history, and Marina [Marina Sirtis plays Counsellor Deanna Troi and has guest-starred in several [Voyager] stories too] works very hard to keep her physical form the way it is. They didn't want anything that was going to bulk them out, so we kept them in the Spandex, but we made some alterations. Stretch fabrics come in what are called two-way stretch or four-way stretch: two-way stretch means that it either stretches up and down or left and right, but it doesn't do both. Four-way stretch means that it does both. Spandex doesn't do that. And it hit me, like one of those things, you're in the show- er and, 'Oh, my God, now I know what it is!' They had run the stretch up and down the body on those uniforms originally. We just turned the fabric around, shifted it 45 degrees or 90 degrees, and we found out we could do these amazing contour outfits and they looked terrific." This knowledge served Blackman in good stead in designing the female Vulcan T'Pol's costume for [Enterprise], which is made of a unique fabric. "It's shades of brown, grey and black eighth-inch lines. But it's woven, so it's on both sides. Just as with Jeri Ryan's fabrics, it is key to find stuff that has a 'good return,' which means when you stretch it out, it goes back exactly to the size it was."

[TNG: Season 2: Where Silence Has Lease] this uniform was worn for Seasons 1 and 2

[TNG] ensemble cast in Season 3-7 uniforms; publicity shot

design drawings for Season 1 [TNG] uniforms:
Red alert: The picture below is 102Kb.