Why Rebecca Romijn chose to wear the Starfleet dress

Rebecca Romijn brought the Starfleet dress to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

Once upon a time, the Starfleet uniform dress wasn’t designed for comfort nor was it really workable in an action sequence, although Nichelle Nichols made hers work for her in the Star Trek: The Original Series’ episode “The Gamesters of Triskelion.” For the most part, the dress was there to enhance a woman’s sex appeal so, in later series of Star Trek, it was replaced with pants or jumpers for women. (Not that the pantsuit T’Pol wore on Star Trek: Enterprise was any less designed to enhance Jolene Blalock’s attributes.)

But now the Starfleet dress has made a comeback, and it was all at the request of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds star, Rebecca Romijn, who plays Number One on the brand new series which debuted on Paramount+ on May 5th. When she first suggested that her character wear a dress, she was met with a resounding “no.” But it didn’t take long for minds to change and then a uniform wardrobe was built for characters so they aren’t always wearing the same clothing.

"“I requested a Starfleet dress, which, the first answer was, ‘No. We’re just going to do pants and tops.”‘And then they came back around and said, ‘No, we changed our mind. Why don’t we start building uniform wardrobes,’ where sometimes I’m wearing Starfleet dress and sometimes not.”"

Rebecca Romijn wasn’t done with her requests, though.

Romijn didn’t just want to wear the Starfleet dress aboard the Enterprise; she wanted to take it into action, according to Slash Film.

"“I made a specific request that the Starfleet dress shouldn’t just be on the Enterprise. I actually want to make sure that Starfleet dress goes into action and turn it into a badass Starfleet dress, so it’s not just like a flight attendant standing around on the enterprise.”"

So Romijn will be rocking the Starfleet dress on some away missions and doing what she calls “flipping the narrative.” She’ll show that wearing a dress has nothing to do with whether or not she can handle danger.