Catacombs Reference LibrarySpace 1999 previews unisex world
Catacombs Reference LibraryThe Space: 1999 costumes did a tour of US shopping malls in August-September 1975, including Tampa, Florida (station WFLA-TV), Austin, Texas (KTVV-TV), and Fresno, California (KFSN-TV). This is an article from St Petersburg, Florida, close to Tampa, where the costumes appeared in the Tyrone Square Mall. The series was shown on Tampa's WFLA Channel 8 from Friday 5th September before shifting to a Monday slot. It was also viewable on cable on WXLT Channel 40. See other press
by Jean Miller, St Petersburg Times Staff Writer
By 1999, men and women will dress alike in simple non-colour pants and hip-length belted tunic tops that zip up at the sides. Status, job category or rank will be indicated by a sleeve of a certain colour or a coloured stripe. At least, if they're members of Moonbase Alpha, according to Rudi Gernreich who designed the costumes for the new TV series, "Space: 1999".
Costume prototypes as well as brief scenes from the series will be on display today at Tyrone Square.
The irrepressible Gernreich has been predicting unisex dress for years and now he's launched it on national television in the persons of series' stars Barbara Bain and Martin Landau.
Gernreich is noted for his digs at nostalgia and periodically has sent shock-waves through the fashion community with his avant-garde creations: the topless swimsuit, dresses with vinyl covered cutouts to reveal the body, necklines plunged below the waist.
Yet through it all, he has always had, as designed Bill Blass once said... "a marvellous sense of anticipation."
Gernreich looks ahead, not back.
In St Petersburg last year, Gernreich predicted "we dress alike because we don't want to stand out. In the future we may wear some kind of uniform in public, jumpsuits or other logical utilitarian dress."
Obviously zippers are quicker and the wool knit uniforms worn by the cast on the soon-to-be launched space program (premiering September 8, Channel 8, 8 p.m.) indeed appear to be utilitarian - a suit for all seasons and occasions.
Gernreich, on occasion, also has taken a few snipes at the frivolity of fashion.
"For one thing, it's much too expensive. People resent that. Nobody takes fashion designers seriously anymore. Today people rely on their own attitudes. They don't like directives."
Unless of course you are "one of the boys" in outer space, where directives specify the uniform.