Space Navy Uniforms
Feb. 11th, 2011 08:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI've been trying to invent a uniform for my futuristic space fleet.
The trouble is so has everyone else ever. Once you add up Andromeda, B5, B7, Farscape, Star Trek and the Stargates you have an awful lot of uniforms. Even if you leave out Star Trek for going with the too tight or too much weird there's still a lot of things that look basically like we think of as a uniform only sort of kind of different.
So I'm thinking of a uniform that's a bit Andromeda High Guard and a bit Farscape Peacekeeper, only different.
:eyeroll:
Actually I tried starting with historical uniforms and they go off in several interesting directions. British uniforms had some extravagant things going on, tails with the corners folded so they were white and red patterns, buttons buttons buttons on the front, all sorts. Also they're one point to blame for the seriously red theme in future uniforms, though black-white-red are the three most attention getting colors for humans.
... the idea of wearing green or brown too an embarrassingly long time to catch on.
But if you're in a space navy then clearly camo isn't your main concern. Be bright red, no problem.
I like the red the leaves turned on the plant that grew up the outside of the dormitories at boarding school. I realise that's a bit specific, but it was a very nice color and the whole school turned it and our uniforms sort of matched. So I spent ages looking for what that plant was. It turns out that what people call Virginia Creeper covers a bunch of different plants that are very different from each other. I thought it wasn't Virginia Creeper because that has the many seperate leaves thing. I thought it wasn't ivy because ivy was evergreen and I remember the leaves falling. But something some sites called Boston Ivy matches my memory, as far as I can tell from the internet. Try google images for 'Parthenocissus tricuspidata veitchii'. Is that not a truly glorious color set? And so varied, you can have green and red and that really dark color uniform variants sort of unified around a theme.
... I didn't just spend ages on hunting that name out for the color. It was bugging me. I could remember the plants, but not the precisions.
I looked up some body armour and a lot of it has a common shape, on account of fitting human shaped bodies, but there's also some with seriously Elvis collars. Not just the little sort that make your neck stay straight, the huge great sort that go up to meet the back of your helmet, like wearing a car headrest. Clearly this is an excuse to do something very vampire count with the collars on the heaviest armour layers. So something like this waistcoat with great big collar jacket or similar long coat over it. Or maybe a T shape front panel on a long coat. But I also like this much softer high collar coat. Especially for SF, that's got that we haven't worn it before thing going on.
There's so much in fashion right now that's calling itself 'military' I could outfit a future military out of Tesco on the cheap. The gothier versions are as ever more appealing.
Also I was thinking about where the rank stripes go. Current uniforms put them on shoulders and cuffs. If you were in a variable g environment where 'up' was a convention you might not meet shoulders first. So stripes go on wrists and ankles both? I don't know if stripy ankles are really a good look though. Plus I keep thinking as if I were filming it on TV, where we wouldn't spend much time on ankles, generally speaking.
Uniform is what I think on when my brain is too short powered for actual words. It only matters to my characters to know how many layers they have to peel off.
PS: Elegant!
The trouble is so has everyone else ever. Once you add up Andromeda, B5, B7, Farscape, Star Trek and the Stargates you have an awful lot of uniforms. Even if you leave out Star Trek for going with the too tight or too much weird there's still a lot of things that look basically like we think of as a uniform only sort of kind of different.
So I'm thinking of a uniform that's a bit Andromeda High Guard and a bit Farscape Peacekeeper, only different.
:eyeroll:
Actually I tried starting with historical uniforms and they go off in several interesting directions. British uniforms had some extravagant things going on, tails with the corners folded so they were white and red patterns, buttons buttons buttons on the front, all sorts. Also they're one point to blame for the seriously red theme in future uniforms, though black-white-red are the three most attention getting colors for humans.
... the idea of wearing green or brown too an embarrassingly long time to catch on.
But if you're in a space navy then clearly camo isn't your main concern. Be bright red, no problem.
I like the red the leaves turned on the plant that grew up the outside of the dormitories at boarding school. I realise that's a bit specific, but it was a very nice color and the whole school turned it and our uniforms sort of matched. So I spent ages looking for what that plant was. It turns out that what people call Virginia Creeper covers a bunch of different plants that are very different from each other. I thought it wasn't Virginia Creeper because that has the many seperate leaves thing. I thought it wasn't ivy because ivy was evergreen and I remember the leaves falling. But something some sites called Boston Ivy matches my memory, as far as I can tell from the internet. Try google images for 'Parthenocissus tricuspidata veitchii'. Is that not a truly glorious color set? And so varied, you can have green and red and that really dark color uniform variants sort of unified around a theme.
... I didn't just spend ages on hunting that name out for the color. It was bugging me. I could remember the plants, but not the precisions.
I looked up some body armour and a lot of it has a common shape, on account of fitting human shaped bodies, but there's also some with seriously Elvis collars. Not just the little sort that make your neck stay straight, the huge great sort that go up to meet the back of your helmet, like wearing a car headrest. Clearly this is an excuse to do something very vampire count with the collars on the heaviest armour layers. So something like this waistcoat with great big collar jacket or similar long coat over it. Or maybe a T shape front panel on a long coat. But I also like this much softer high collar coat. Especially for SF, that's got that we haven't worn it before thing going on.
There's so much in fashion right now that's calling itself 'military' I could outfit a future military out of Tesco on the cheap. The gothier versions are as ever more appealing.
Also I was thinking about where the rank stripes go. Current uniforms put them on shoulders and cuffs. If you were in a variable g environment where 'up' was a convention you might not meet shoulders first. So stripes go on wrists and ankles both? I don't know if stripy ankles are really a good look though. Plus I keep thinking as if I were filming it on TV, where we wouldn't spend much time on ankles, generally speaking.
Uniform is what I think on when my brain is too short powered for actual words. It only matters to my characters to know how many layers they have to peel off.
PS: Elegant!
