20 Things You Never Knew About Star Trek: Insurrection
6. It Was Finally Time For The Crew To Receive Fancy New Dress Uniforms
The dress uniforms for the Next Generation crew were first introduced in the season one episode Lonely Among Us, serving as a variation of the regular coloured uniforms that the crew wore from week to week. This evolved, but only slightly, over the course of the show. For this film, costume designer Robert Blackman wanted to go slightly old school.
His initial design idea for the Insurrection uniforms was inspired by old Naval ideas. The first scene for the Next Generation crew in Star Trek: Generations saw them in a literal Navy uniform, and Blackman liked the blue jackets, shorter and trim. However, once he sat down to really think about it, he turned on the idea altogether.
Next, he came up with a colour palette for the film. He believed that white on black would always pop, no matter the situation. Therefore, the white, short jacket made its first appearance, sitting atop high-waisted black trousers. The only real variation was that Picard wore an all-white variant, while the rest of the crew wore two-tone jackets.