I’m back. The history exhibition of my home village that I produced with my siblings was a modest success. It’s still creating a buzz on the village history Facebook page. But now I must return to this blog and reveal more hidden or forgotten aspects of lgbt history.
Earlier this year I wrote about lgbt costume designers in the “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” franchises. Today we look at another science fiction television series, one which celebrates its 50th anniversary today. That series is “Space: 1999”.
“Space: 1999” is one of my favourite shows, and I saw that very first episode on 4 September 1975. What appealed to me most, apart from the theme tune and opening credits, were the costumes. In particular, the costumes of the crew of Moonbase Alpha, the protagonists of the series.
But first, I want to give an update on my Time Lord cosplay. I mentioned on May 4th that I was dusting off the costume and doing repairs. Well, one week before I was intending to wear it at EmCon I changed my mind. I was still going to cosplay a Time Lord, but now I wanted to cosplay Ncuti Gatwa as Doctor Who himself. Specifically, in the costume he wore in his final episode that was broadcast exactly a week before the convention. Below is a couple of screenshots I took to help me make the costume. All I had was a white, short-sleeved top, so I had 6 days to come up with something that looked like that.
A black pin-striped waistcoat and black trousers that I already had would be substitutes for the blue, denim ones Ncuti wore. All I needed was to buy enough denim material to make the kilt, and as I own a genuine kilt I knew that it required a LOT of material.
Below in the finished costume. I was very pleased with the end result, even though it wasn’t an exact copy, and I had enough material left over to make a denim waistcoat in the future. Unlike the purple Time Lord robes, I wasn’t embarrassed walking through the busy Saturday morning streets of Nottingham city centre to the convention half a mile away. The success of my endeavours was proven by people recognising the costume, including actor Jemma Redgrave who co-starred with Ncuti Gatwa in the final episode.
You may think all that was irrelevant, but you’ll be surprised just how much it isn’t.
Back to “Space: 1999”. The Moonbase Alpha uniforms were designed by openly gay designer Rudi Gernreich (1922-1985). Rudi was one of the most well-known fashion designers of the 1960s and ‘70s. He was born in Austria and, as a Jew, was forced to flee to the USA with his mother when Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938.
Rudi’s talent in fashion was sparked as a child by visiting his aunt’s dress shop in Vienna. He would spend hours sketching the high society dresses that his aunt sold. These sketches caught the attention of Ladislaus Czettel, a costume designer who had recently returned to Austria after having found it difficult finding work in Germany because he was Jewish. Czettel offered Rudi an apprenticeship in London, but Rudi’s mother though he was too young to travel abroad (Rudi was only 12).
Rudi’s fashion career in the USA started in Hollywood, but he hated it. Likewise, he worked for various fashion designers and disliked the fact that he was required to follow “house design” and current fashion trends. However, during this period he was also designing and selling some of his own designs.
By 1960 he was able to found his own design house, G. R. Designs (later renamed Rudi Gernreich Inc.). Now he was able to let his own ideas about fashion turn him into a leading figure of the 1960s fashion revolution with daring experiments in fashion theory, design and colours. In particular he advocated the wearing of unisex clothing, something that seems quite normal today, but some of his ideas may strike us as being unusual (his monokini still attracts controversy among fashion historians).
It was the unisex look that Rudi came up with for the “Space: 1999” Moonbase Alpha uniforms. It was a simple plain, beige two-piece – trousers and long-sleeved top. The only indications or rank or occupation was in the colour of one sleeve and subtle rank markings (photo below). He also designed a vesion with a skirt. These were worn through the first sries, but another designer altered them for the second.
Rudi became something of a celebrity in the 1960s. He even appeared as himself in an episode of the classic television series “Batman”. A screenshot of that appearance is below.
But, wait. Haven’t I seen that orange and brown plaid combination recently? Actually, yes, I have, and it brings us back to Ncuti Gatwa’s costumes as Doctor Who.
The first costume anyone ever saw Ncuti Gatwa wearing was in the publicity photos released in 2022 to reveal what his Doctor would look like. It consisted of an orange sweater and brown plain coat (pictured below). It’s one of several costumes Ncuti wore it in his first full episode as the Doctor, “The Church on Ruby Road”, broadcast on Christmas Day 2023, and he wore in a later episode called “Dot and Bubble”.
This similarity may have been just a coincidence, except that I don’t believe in coincidence. The costume designer for Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor was Pam Downes. Pam hasn’t admitted in any interview that I’ve read that the orange sweater and brown plain coat combination was inspired by Rudi’s costume in the “Batman” episode, but I’ll leave it up to you to make your own conclusion.
However, Pam has said that she tried to experiment with the Doctor’s costume. One design element she was keen to include, as was the show’s producer, Russell T. Davies, was the use of kilts or skirts for he Doctor. Ncuti’s Doctor wore several kilts throughout his tenure. Pam said she was inspired by the look of the “men in skirts” of 1970s New York. Guess who was the leading advocate for men wearing skirts in the 1970s? Yes, Rudi Gernreich.
There are other lgbt costume designers in science fiction to write about and they will appear next year, where we will encounter the late Queen Elizabeth II and a long lost “Doctor Who” story (not together).
