Put a cape on it, you cowards!

Have you seen this things about the leaked designs for the new Royal Air Force uniforms? About how everyone's making fun of them for looking like something out of Star Trek? I mean, not being British, or in the Royal Air Force, I don't really have an opinion about them, but they look like this:

If I did have an opinion, I guess it would be: I dunno, whatever.

Brought to you by Supermarionation
and, one presumes, LSD.

Anyway, as someone with an internet connection, I do feel obligated to have something to say on it, so I'm going to focus on the reaction to the uniforms. It's widely been one of ridicule owing to the general sci-fi vibe they give off. Like I mentioned, comparisons are being drawn to the uniforms from Star Trek, but I've read some tweets and articles saying that they look like Captain Scarlett, which again, not British, so I had to look it up. It's a sci-fi puppet show about a secret agent whose also an alien duplicate and also immortal, and ok, the uniforms kind look a little Captain Scarlett-ish? Maybe?

Lo, I have seen the future, and it is grey.

I think people are just trying to make sense of the bland, form-fitting jumpsuits and reaching for whatever cultural reference makes the most sense to them. In any case, both comparisons are way off, as they are clearly lifted from Mass Effect 2. But I think we can all agree that they are, by far, less dumb than the U.S. Space Force's outfits. And yes, I'm going to punch down a bit here, but in my defense, that organization was created by a reality TV autarch who once advised Americans to drink bleach.

In addition to stealing the Star Trek arrowhead emblem, Space Force also cribbed their uniforms from Battlestar Galactica, and I--huh? No, the reboot Battlestar with Edwards James Olmos, not the Lorne Greene one with the earth tone velour capes. 

Although, I would have had some grudging respect
for the choice of earth tone velour capes. 

Because someday we will have progressed
beyond the need for fashion...and zippers...and
the need for anyone to take us seriously.

Anyway, yeah, all of these outfits are unimaginative, bland, futuristic nonsense. It's like whoever designed them went on some kind of sci-fi marathon and distilled all the most generic elements of the costumes into off-brand and inoffensive future-ware. But I mean, I suppose there is some point at which it stops being imitation and inches towards inspiration, right? Like, the costumes on say Star Trek or in video games or whatever, tend to use clean lines, neutral tones, and synthetic materials because that's what we've come to expect from the future, but we expect it because we've been absorbing all this sci-fi. Art imitates life and then life starts to imitate art. I'm not saying the jumpsuits look good, but I think the idea here is that it's the future now, so we might as well start dressing like it.

That's how fashion works, right? Things start out looking ridiculous and then, over time, we get used to them and they become the norm. Take neck ruffs. They're objectively preposterous, but became status symbols in the sixteenth century. Finally, rich people were able to show off how much lace and starch they could afford. Obviously, Elizabethans had weird priorities, but I think my point stands: laugh now, but in twenty years we might all be rocking the grey lycra unitard.

Execution by beheading was also super-popular back then, so maybe they
also evolved as a defensive measure. Like, good luck getting an axe through all that.