Costume designers can only speculate on what coming intergalactic fashions will look like, but as Star Trek and After Earth demonstrate, the future is nearly always skintight

Recent sci-fi, such as JJ Abrams' Star Trek Into Darkness and After Earth (Shyamalan, 2013), are reminders of how film and TV so often depict future fashion as skimpy or skintight. The uniforms in Abrams' Star Trek revival have progressed from previous versions, but retain the hallmarks of the originals. The men's uniforms have a mesh outer layer, reminiscent of moisture-wicking sportswear. The female uniforms are more precise replicas of the originals, with miniskirts and knee-high boots. In After Earth, the stranded father and son are costumed in something reminiscent of an armoured wetsuit. These films are following a tradition established by films such as Logan's Run (1976), Buck Rogers (1979-1981) and Tron (1982), in which costume left little to the imagination.

Historically, fashion has tended towards being increasingly revealing. It has become progressively more acceptable to wear ever more form-fitting garments and to expose the skin. It therefore seems likely that sci-fi costumes such as these reflect the logical progression of fashion.

In science fiction, the costume designers can only speculate as to what the fashions of the future may be. In hindsight, many of these prove inaccurate. The "futuristic" visions of some 60s and 70s sci-fi now have a retro feel. The minidresses that have survived Star Trek reboots are a homage to the 60s – the decade of the original series. Costumes such as those worn by Jane Fonda in Barbarella (1969) featured fabrics that were perceived as futuristic at the time, including metallic fibres and plastics. When these materials were incorporated into fashion by designers including Mary Quant and Paco Rabanne, they represented the height of fabric technology. Perhaps as a result of this enthusiastic adoption by the fashion world, they have become more closely associated with the 60s and the space-race aesthetic than with the future.

Science-fiction films tend to fall into two categories. First, there are those that imagine the progression of society towards a brighter, technologically enabled future. Second, there are dystopian societies that have regressed to resemble a historical era. Sci-fi costume can be divided into the same two categories. It imagines a possible future that has progressed forward, following established rules of fashion evolution (as in Star Trek), or a vision that resembles a western or Victorian period drama (as in Joss Whedon's Serenity, 2005).

Both of these approaches are fair. Fashion is cyclical. It relies on revival and bricolage. It is therefore likely that, regardless of how technologically advanced we become, our clothes will directly appropriate from what has come before. In order to move forward, fashion reframes the past. Historical references are also useful in connoting social, political and cultural aspects of these imagined futures. The Nazi-like uniforms of Starship Troopers (1997), for example, help to establish the sense of a military dictatorship.

Though fashion tends to be cyclical, new technology creates exceptions. It allows clothes that have never existed before. Some of the most influential trends of the last 100 years of fashion have been inspired by new science. Access to new fabrics, such as PVC, allowed Quant to rebel against tradition. Arguably, it was social change (sexual liberation) that led to the adoption of skintight jeans and leggings, but this could never have happened without the introduction of lycra [1]. Similarly, no pre-existing moments in the fashion cycle would have enabled us to predict CuteCircuit's Twitter dress.

Science is also transforming the way we create clothes. Clothes have historically been produced by sewing flat shapes of fabric together, thereby transforming multiple flat shapes into a three-dimensional shape. New technologies are beginning to make sewing obsolete. Issey Miyake has established a research institute in Toyko with the aim of exploring new possibilities in fabric and garment creation. This research has yielded new bonding methods that may change our approach to garment manufacture. As in A-POC (a complete outfit that is manufactured at once, from a tube of fabric), the acts of weaving fabric and sewing pieces together are no longer separate processes. The weaving of the fabric and the bonding of the layers can be a single automatic process. There is no sewing, and therefore no seams.

A collaboration between Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art resulted in the invention of Fabrican, a spray-on fabric. Fabrican canisters contain wet fibres that may be sprayed directly on to the surface of the body. As the fibres dry, they bond, forming a single piece of flexible, shaped fabric [2]. Spray-on fabric has the potential to revolutionise the fashion industry. As it is sprayed directly on to the body, it removes the issue of sizing from the dressmaking process. It also changes the way that garments may be repaired. In order to fix a rip or tear, more fabric may be sprayed to invisibly seal the hole.

Fabrican is like a second skin: tight-fitting and seam-free [3]. This gives credence to the theory that skintight garments may become more common, and provides further evidence that future fashion is likely to be seam-free. As in the reinvented Man of Steel (2013) costume, and wetsuits in Star Trek Into Darkness, clothes may be moulded to fit our bodies perfectly.

Another factor to consider is that many of these costumes are uniforms. Uniform tends to fall outside of the usual fashion cycle. It is fixed, rather than modal. Uniforms tend to remain largely unchanged for many decades, and are therefore likely to be at least partly historical in design [4]. It is possible that the uniforms of the future would be very similar to those worn today, and would follow the same signifying systems for rank and situation.

If we want predictions of fashion's future, we should ignore the Starfleet uniforms and explore the clothes worn by the extras in the background. In the bar scenes and on the streets of future London, we see signs of otherness that truly sets the Star Trek world apart from our own. Here, we see the exoticism of alien influence, and the hybrid styles that arise within the fashion cycle.

References:

[1] AFMA (American Fiber Manufacturers Association). A Short History of Manufactured Fibers, 2010.

[2] Seymour, Sabine. Fashionable Technology; New York, Springer Wien, 2008, 86.

[3] Except when structures are attached to the body first.

[4] Barnard, Malcolm. Fashion as Communication; London, Routledge, 1996, 12.