Captain Kirk's Original Starfleet Tunic (William Shatner)

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Captain Kirk's Original Starfleet Tunic (William Shatner)

Throughout The Original Series, officers on the USS Enterprise are wearing a very well recognizable suit. The suit is composed by a shiny coloured shirt with a stylized arrowhead on the left hand side (the insignia of Starfleet), a dark gray pants (which appeared black on camera), and several gold solid or dotted braids on the sleeves (which indicates the rank). The shirt’s colour indicates the branch of the crew members. Command people wear the yellow shirts, operations, engineering and security personnel wear red ones, and science and medical personnel wear blue ones. The costume of Captain Kirk of course is yellow with three rows of braids.

The costumes of the original series have been designed by William Ware Theiss who've worked in film and television industry for more than thirty years. The choice of coloured shirts comes from a NBC request to Desilu, producer of the series, to promote color TV. Gene Roddenberry hired again William Ware Theiss to design costumes for his two television pilots Genesis II and Planet Earth as well as Star Trek The Next Generation in 1987.

Writer: PG