After enjoying watching Star Trek: Lower Decks (LD), I decided I wanted a LD costume to wear at events with my Star Trek group.
I poked around online a bit trying to find a shirt, but I had some difficulty figuring out which (if any) were better quality, so I just went with the cheapest one I found in science blue (my default).
After I got it and tried it on, I saw it had some fit issues that could probably be fixed, but figured it was good enough to wear as-is for an upcoming Con.
Most of my basic Trek costumes are easy to style-- start with the shirt,
just wear black pants and
black shoes, and possibly badge/pips depending on the shirt style.
LD seems to call for different footwear, though, so I checked Memory Alpha to see what
it said about the uniforms and pulled the pic at right.
I was surprised to see it showing two colors of boots with the blue uniform.
I liked the white boots, so that's what I wanted to use. But I wasn't ready to try cosplaying any specific character-- I just wanted to be a general crew member, and I don't think of myself as Medical. After re-watching a bunch of eps, though, it looked like most of the blue shirts wore white boots, and many of them had no apparent Medical connection. So it would seem that isn't the rule, and I decided to go ahead and get white boots.
Also, the boots should be outside the pants. But the pants I usually wear with
my Trek uniforms are fairly wide at the bottom, and wouldn't work for that.
Then I remembered I had some black jeans that were rather narrower and might work.
They were a bit faded (as jeans are wont to be), and so more charcoal than pure black...
But then again, there are some sources that say the LD uniforms are supposed
to be charcoal and not black. So I went with those jeans.
I wore the outfit for the first time at Megacon in February 2024. The only pic I got was the one at left, after I'd been wearing it for just a couple of hours. You can see it's got a number of issues.
As for the overall styling, the jeans wouldn't stay inside the boots, so I need to figure out other pants to wear. Also, I decided I didn't really like charcoal for the pants because the shirt top is true black-- I think it's better if they match. (I suspect the reason they are charcoal in the animated drawings is to distinguish them from the black boots, making the boots look more slick.)
I'm also wearing a tee-shirt underneath the main shirt, and the bottom of it shows (even though it was hidden when I pulled the main shirt down). I won't do that again.
But the biggest issues were with the main shirt. Some of them I was aware of, but had decided to wear it for the con anyway. For example, the sleeves were too long (something that had been mentioned in the online reviews). and the overall fit was very loose (mainly because it's not cut for women and the fabric has no stretch). But after wearing it all day, I found a couple more things I'd need to adjust.
Anyway, if the adjustments were trivial, I probably wouldn't bother writing about them, but since they've gone a bit beyond that I figured it might be of some interest. So here's what I've done, more or less in the order I did the fixes:
Solution: I debated several possible approaches to fixing this, like making Princess seams, making the shoulders narrower, etc. I was concerned that any changes I made around the top would (at best) make it hard to keep the white line straight and continuous, so I restricted my changes to the blue fabric. What I ended up doing was taking in the side seams, up into the sleeve underarm seams. This took in about 5" total at the waistline.
Solution: There were a lot of wrinkles/fold lines when I first removed it from the package, so I washed it right away hoping it would get rid of them. It got a little better, but not much... those wrinkles were pretty well set in. So when I was pressing the new seams I made in the previous item, I went ahead and pressed the whole shirt--with steam. That worked pretty well to get rid of them.
Solution: This was one that wasn't apparent when I first tried it on, but was happening all day when I wore it at the con (and shows in the pic). That was possibly because of the extra weight from the rank pips I had put on, but they're not all THAT heavy--and they do need to be worn. I decided to put a strip of hook-and-loop fastener near the neck opening.
Solution: I'd prefer a separate badge, but this came with one, made of something like thin foam, that was glued to the shirt. I tried to pull it off, but no luck. Although it was actually slightly 3D, it didn't really look like it; it looked pretty much like it was part of the fabric. I took a black Sharpie and outlined the edge a bit to make it stand out more. It's subtle, but I do like it better. I think maybe it's because it looks more "cartoony"?
Solution: I shortened them, after I'd made the side seam adjustments (just in case that might make a difference).
Solution: The closure on the shirt is 3 snaps, all along the overlapped edge (which is part of the reason why the neckline wouldn't stay put). The top 2 seem okay, but the bottom one didn't seem to be in quite the right place because the fabric would hang kinda weird around it. Upon closer investigation, I discovered the 2 pieces of the snap were about 1/2" apart (!) I decided to use hook-and-loop to close that section properly.
Solution: After doing all the above, I felt the shirt looked "acceptable" to wear. But I had another idea that I thought would help give it a better shape, which was to add back darts. It took several passes of trying on and pinning where I thought the darts should go, before I could stitch them down. But I got something that I was happy with.
As a side note, after addressing the overlap misalignment (previous item), it seemed like the 2 bottom edges of the shirt were obviously misaligned, and I'd need to redo the bottom edge. But when I tried the shirt on after finishing this step, I decided it wasn't so obvious any more, and in fact the shirt looked pretty darn good, especially considering what I started with.
(below section added 7/17/2024)
I got a chance to wear the updated version at Supercon in July 2024 (pic at right).
Besides the shirt updates described above, I also found a pair of black pants
with bottoms that were narrow enough to go inside the boots (I added elastic
like stirrups on the bottom to help them stay there).
It's not perfect, but
I'm satisfied with it.
(following section added 3/16/25)
Variation
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