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William Riker’s First Season Original Starfleet Uniform
Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek entrusted the costumes design to a close collaborator, William Ware Theiss, who had already created for him the costumes of 79 episodes of the original Star Trek TV series, and the two science fiction TV pilots Genesis II and Planet Earth.
William Ware Theiss, who returned to Star Trek to design the initial crew uniforms and costumes for the first year of Star Trek: The Next Generation , even being awarded with the Best Costume Design Emmy for his work on the episode "The Big Goodbye". It took Theiss months to come up with the uniform for The Next Generation that was acceptable. Simple to look at but, difficult to manufacture.
Theiss drew from the original series, rather than the movies, as a jumping off point because he felt clothing is, even now, moving toward a less structured look. They're made of jumbo-weight spandex; the material swimwear is made from.
He try not to make the designs too complex, visually. Simpler is more effective. Theiss decided with Gene Roddenberry's approval, to change the traditional colour scheme of gold for command, red for engineering, and blue for sciences. Theiss felt costumes that were primarily those colours were not necessarily the most universally becoming choices. Instead, he now relegated colour to a distinctive block on the chest and on the sleeves, and used black on the shoulders to set off the actor's faces, and black on their hips and legs to help smooth out their figures.
As Gene Roddenberry did not want any fold on the uniform, the actors generally had a lower size. Therefore the actors needed all the help they could get in that regard, for although they were all trim and fit, the spandex uniforms were tight, stretchy, and unforgiving of the slightest deviation from physical perfection. Theiss left the series after the first season and was replaced by Durinda Rice Wood in the second.
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