Star Trek: Ranking Every Starfleet Uniform Worst To Best

With more than 50 years of history behind it, the Star Trek Universe has built itself quite a wardrobe.

Too easily dismissed as "pajamas", Star Trek's Starfleet uniforms have varied wildly in form and style – from the classic three-tone costumes of The Original Series to the blinged-out duty blues of Star Trek: Discovery. Almost every new series and movie has introduced its own sartorial vision of the future, raising the question of why a paramilitary organization like Starfleet would need to change its tailor quite so often and creating a huge selection for cosplaying fans at convention time.

Some of these costumes have represented questionable fashion statements and been the bane of the actors forced to squeeze into them, others have become icons of the franchise, as recognizable as other Trek aesthetics like Spock's bowl cut and Klingon kleavage.

Here's our ranking of each Starfleet duty uniform from the least flattering to the pride of Starfleet's closets.

Robert Fletcher was charged with completely redesigning the classic Starfleet uniforms for the franchise's first warp onto the big screen in 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture. At the request of director Robert Wise, these uniforms were aggressively monochromatic, eschewing the distinctive gold, blue, and red TOS uniforms for earth tone jumpsuits that left little to the imagination.

Fletcher carefully crafted a new division color and ranking system, even producing an extensive guide for the costumers to follow on set. With the film's inflated budget, Fletcher was able to design numerous variant costumes that included formal two-piece uniforms, casual robe-like wraparound uniforms, and the aforementioned formfitting duty jumpsuits. These uniforms were also distinguished by futuristic belt buckles that were, according to Gene Roddenberry's movie novelization, medical scanners linked to the Enterprise sickbay – a reasonable technological development for a spacefaring civilization unconcerned with protecting their personal data.

Still, TMP's uniforms were notoriously bland, falling into the background of the similarly earth tone sets rather than popping on screen like their 1960s predecessors. Star Trek: The Motion Picture's numerous costumes are undeniably futuristic, but Star Trek has a distinctive vision of the future and these threads just don't fit.