Star Trek Uniforms - The Starfleet's uniforms have changed quite a bit throughout the years. The costumes worn by the members of the crew during the original series of Star Trek are arguably the most instantly recognizable of the lot. In the first Star Trek, characters wore different colored tee shirts which indicated what branch of the USS Enterprise they were a part of (for example, security personnel wore blue). The red shirt of the engineers became infamous because of the number of them that died in the show. Rank was indicated by gold markings on the sleeves. Male crew members wore black pants while female crew wore famously short miniskirts. All uniforms were emblazoned with an arrowhead logo on the left hand side. These original costumes, however, were made using a material called velour which shrank when it was dry-cleaned and which tended to tear quite easily. As a result of this, the material used to make the uniforms was changed to nylon after the second season.
The costume used for Star Trek: Voyager and throughout most of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is quite different to the original uniform of the inaugural series. It consists of a mostly black jumpsuit with colored patches on the shoulders. Furthermore, characters wore grey turtlenecks underneath their jumpsuits. The arrowhead insignia is still present on the left breast of the uniform in this series. Major Kirks outfit in this series was different because she was not a member of the Starfleet but rather a Bajoran who was working on Deep Space Nine.
In Star Trek: Enterprise, the costumes worn by the characters are much more modern with some of the cast even sporting baseball caps. Also, for the first time, there were zips and buttons on the uniforms. These items had been avoided by costume designers in the past because they believed they would become obsolete in the future. It was clear by the time that Enterprise was being made, however, that this was not going to happen. Also, these changes helped to make Enterprise stand out from previous series and gave Star Trek a much more modern aura. In keeping with this modern style of dress, male and females wore the same uniform with the miniskirts of the original series becoming but a vague memory. This was a much more comfortable uniform than the ones that previous casts would have worn.
Overall, there has been many different Star Trek uniforms down the years but, in my opinion at least, the original will always be at the forefront when I think about Star Trek even if Star Trek: Enterprise does attempt to modernize the whole uniform, probably to make it more appealing to younger audiences.