As the costume designer for Star Trek: Picard season 2, Christine Bieselin Clark received a well-deserved Emmy nomination for her work creating the dazzling looks worn by Patrick Stewart and his cast.
Clark and her team rose to the challenge and created multiple looks for Picard season 2's different eras, encompassing Starfleet in the 25th century, the fascist future of the Confederation, and modern-day Los Angeles circa 2024.
Screen Rant interviewed Christine Bieselin Clark and spoke in depth about the difference between the Confederation and Mirror Universe costumes, re-designing the Borg Queen (Annie Wersching) for Picard season 2, how the new costumes Q (John de Lancie) wore reflect how he's changed from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Patrick Stewart's fashion sense.
Screen Rant: Let's start with the Confederation, which is one of my favorite parts of Star Trek: Picard season 2. It was a very different vision of a dark Federation than the Mirror Universe, which is more golden and flamboyant. Can you talk about designing Picard's Confederation costumes?
Christine Bieselin Clark: It's very interesting to get the opportunity to do so many different things within the same season. And we really kind of felt like three different shows in the same season for season two. We very much started with connective tissue to our season one designs and that soft, warm, autumnal kind of pallette. Everything was very textural and endearing. And then we adjusted the switch when Q came in and turned us upside down. It was just a really great opportunity to distinctly pivot so dramatically.
In the socio-political commentary that is Star Trek, we were trying to create a vision that is dark and devoid of color. So the Mirror Universe... I mean, just the word "mirror" alone has this sort of gloss and slickness to it. For us, [the Confederation] was this "Wake Up World!" antithesis, a very fascist, dark world that's so anti-Picard. We extracted all the color and went into the rich, gray, science fiction world. Darkness. Black. Little bits of leather. It was just a really fun opportunity to shapeshift within the same world.
One of the striking things about the Confederation is that, as you said, you pulled the color out. Which leads me to the Starfleet uniforms that are so colorful with red, gold, and blue. Let's talk about the update of Starfleet uniforms you designed for season 2. What was the vision that went into that?
Christine Bieselin Clark: When you look at a uniform in general, just across the board, there is a language to uniformity. There is a militarized language that's used in all kinds of uniforms throughout history, from our American uniforms to international uniforms that exist. For Starfleet, we're not military. [Starfleet is about] peaceful exploration, right? But we still follow military rules with ranking systems, the pips, and divisions. All of that language is still there for us, but it's all within the context of Star Trek.
We did a deep dive into the history of the uniforms at large. After The Original Series, the command colors shifted, where gold used to be the command color. But it's been very distinctly that burgundy mustard, gold, teal/aquamarine palette for eons, and you really don't want to mess with that. That's the history of Trek. So for us, it was really just having reverence for all of the historical context within the franchise, but then doing those little odes.
[Picard's Starfleet uniforms] are really an amalgamation of Wrath of Khan uniforms and lots of Starfleet that we've seen in the past. Always keeping the body black with the division colors. I also worked in a little bit off of what our friend Gersha Phillips did on Star Trek: Discovery with the deltas and that delta print. Discovery is so glossy and fabulous. We took that delta print into our divisions and opened the frame of it just to make it a little softer, a little more in the Picard world palette. So there's a connective tissue to all kinds of uniforms that we've seen. But our spin on it was to sleek the body, and make something Wrath of Khan but very much in our Starfleet context of history.
What's Patrick Stewart like to costume? All of his clothes in season 2 are so classy.
Christine Bieselin Clark: I adore that man. Soup to nuts, he's just stellar. As a leader of our department, of our show, of all of Picard, he's just a fabulous human being. But he also has incredible taste. As a costume designer, you're always coming at things from the character's perspective. What are the choices that Jean-Luc is making? In a world where you can replicate anything, the choices that you're making for what you're doing or saying tells us a lot about Jean-Luc. For instance, his love of knitwear is very much rooted in his historical reverence for certain analog things.
But Patrick himself? For an 82-year-old guy, he's got some fashion sense. He's a good-looking man. And so for us [as costume designers], it's how to make Patrick Stewart look beautiful. We had lots of conversations and really lovely fittings with Patrick. We would see each other every day. But definitely, at least once a week, we would have a little bit of fitting time. We had our own tailor, Michael Sloane, a fantastic tailor to the stars. He worked with us in-house and made everything for Patrick to custom. That gave us the ability to really fit things incredibly well. So you get the sharpness of line and that really impressive silhouette of Jean-Luc, but in a way that's very specific to us in our show.
In my own headcanon, Picard seems like a man who employs a tailor. He seems very bespoke.
Christine Bieselin Clark: Absolutely. Meticulous, streamlined fashion meets function. I think Jean-Luc has a great reverence for craft and skill. And the historical art of tailoring, I think, is something that would be of interest to him. So we really tried to bring that thought process into the way that we styled his looks.
Most of Picard season 2 takes place in 2024 Los Angeles. I believe I saw Jeri Ryan on social media raving about how much he loves Seven of Nine's costumes in that era. She looked great. And so did Michelle Hurd as Raffi. They really complemented each other. Can you talk about their outfits?
Christine Bieselin Clark: As a designer, it's always going back to where these clothes come from. Who chose them? What are they for? What are they doing? But it's also an opportunity to have fun. For us, we're going into 2024, and we go to this gala where everyone's in black tie and gowns. What a fun time. It was old Hollywood glamour for Jeri Ryan, and we picked this incredible color palette for her. We called Michelle's costume for Raffi the "champagne dream." It was a way to show a little bit more of their personalities, but also have a lot of fun with modern style.
And then also we took them into downtown Los Angeles streets. So again, where were these clothes coming from? All this stuff was from Teresa's clinic. These are kind of like clothes that are gonna go to the Goodwill or are hand-me-downs or stuff for the community. And so they're rifling through [these clothes] to get ready to go out into the streets. For Jeri , it was like my 1970s Barbie look for her. We put her in beautiful suede button-down, Western-style shirts, and slightly bootcut denim jeans. It was just so much fun to have the opportunity to kind of do some modern takes on in our contemporary looks for these characters.
We've got to talk about Agnes Jurati's red dress, which I think is one of everyone's favorite pieces of clothing from season 2. And Alison Pill had to sing in that dress, so that dress had to be a showstopper, right?
Christine Bieselin Clark: Yes. Again, what are these choices that our characters are making? Jurati is just such a quirky, wonderful, bizarre mix of personality and emotion. She's also a very beautiful woman. And we are going to have a showstopping moment. So for me, as a designer, you're thinking, Okay, what, what would Jurati's choices be in this? But then also, we're going to put her on stage, and she's going to belt [a song] out. And it has to be exactly what you said: a showstopper.
So, the choice of the color red was made very early on by our showrunners and producers and myself. It just seemed like the most perfect choice of color for her. But also doing something a little bit demure and soft, with a kind of 1950s style line to it, but then really glamming it up for her. I mean, she was stunning. The first time we see her in that dress, I think is a jaw-dropper. That's exactly what we wanted. But also, there's the story that costume will tell over many episodes. We're going to do the slow reveal that's going to take this beautiful, glamorous red dress into our Borg queen.
What you can't see at the beginning is this amazing textural pattern that we created that has line language that's similar to our Borg Queen. And that was created in-house with our costume concept artists. We foiled this beautiful geometric Borg Queen pattern into the layers of the skirt. When you first see her, it's just a stunningly beautiful gown.
But as she comes undone, we see her go on this journey where she's assimilating the mercenaries and coming to the place where we're going to see her transform fully into that Borg Queen costume. That layer comes forward as we're stripping away layers of skirts and tattering her in her journey. And it's just a wonderful transition that leads us from beautiful glam showstopper to Borg Queen.
You were also tasked with redesigning the Borg Queen herself, played by Annie Wersching. What went into putting Picard's version of the Borg Queen's look together?
Christine Bieselin Clark: I always feel there must be that reverence and respect for that which came before. Not just Alice Krige's incredible performance, but the designs that were already created. I think that the fan base really needs that connectivity, but we have to modernize things. The appetite for what you see on film these days is incredibly different from our first encounters with the Borg Queen. So the at the helm of our ship was the amazing Neville Page. And that creature design itself really set the tone for what we were doing. And it's just outstanding.
That prosthetic, the look of everything, the color palette that was chosen, the fact that we still get her freckles coming through. All of that needed a costume to play hero support that would frame it nicely, move well, and be interesting visually. We carefully constructed a color palette that complemented the prosthetic, had connective tissue to our original Borg Queen, and also the Borg that we did in season one.
We chose an expression called 'weaponized femininity' for our Borg Queen. We were inspired by incredible fashion designers of the 80s like Thierry Mugler. The corset really takes that feminine shape of Annie and uses it as a creature tool. And it's a fantastic collaboration, I think, between the old and the new, and the concept art and design of Neville.
And of course, Q came back in season 2, and he's an older Q who is very different in style and demeanor than he was in The Next Generation. How did Q's costume design reflect how he has changed in season 2?
Christine Bieselin Clark: I think the history of Q is one that iconically can be seen as mischievous. I think that there's a lot of vamp and camp to the history of Q in TNG. [He's] always dressing up in different ways and appearing in different uniforms and costumes. But I do feel like there's a great ode to those judges' robes from the council, and this black robe and gorgeous brocade kind of necklace that he wore. I think that's very much Q imagery that people recall.
[For Picard], it was taking that and modernizing it, making it a little more serious for us. I think the storyline for Q in season two is very different from things that we've seen in the past. The relationship he has with Picard is something really beautiful that unfolds, and the mischievousness of Q takes a much darker turn. And I felt that the costume really needed to support that so [there is] connected tissue to the silhouette from the past from modernizing it, using a beautiful midnight blue color. The dark and the light combined into the same symmetry.
John de Lancie is just a presence of a man. [We] created a very structured look for him with his high leather collar and great shoulder line. There's something really operatic and elegant about his appearance, and I think he played that extremely well. We created a jewelry piece for him that has connectivity to that necklace that [he wore] in TNG. There's always little touches, but our modern take on it is a much more elegant, graceful, and impressive Q.
We lost Nichelle Nichols recently. Uhura's era of Star Trek is being represented in Strange New Worlds, but how has Nichelle impacted Star Trek costumes and your work in Picard in particular?
Christine Bieselin Clark: All Hail the Queen, right? What a tremendous talent. So much of our own connection to Trek is a lot of the socio-political commentary that's been made throughout the decades, and all of the history that has paid been paved by The Original Series.
And Nichelle is so much a part of that for us, from the interracial kiss with Kirk and [seeing] a woman in command. Whoopi Goldberg and Michelle Hurd [have spoken about] about how important Nichelle was to them as young women of color, to see her on their television screen and, and what that meant to them. So there's always going to be a reverence for her and her character.
I think whenever we put someone in uniform, or whenever we have female officers, at large, there is always an influence, and push towards, you know, some kind of connection [to Uhura]. I did, however, make a conscious decision very early on to never put anyone in a skirt. I think that, for me, is a sign of the times. We do look at Trek throughout the years, and there's very different uniforms that were worn by females. We have the skants, and all that stuff.
I think that in the 60s, that pointed towards a certain style of the times. For us now, trying to even the playing field between the genders, we made the choice to not have, any skirts or legs. It was the same uniform for males and females. So I think that that is an ode to the past and the past uniforms.
Star Trek: Picard Season 2 Synopsis
Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard takes the legendary Jean-Luc Picard and his crew on a bold and exciting new journey: into the past. Picard must enlist friends both old and new to confront the perils of 21st century Earth in a desperate race against time to save the galaxy’s future — and face the ultimate trial from one of his greatest foes.
Check out our previous interviews with the cast and crew of Picard season 2:
- Patrick Stewart
- John de Lancie
- Akiva Goldsman
- Jeri Ryan & Michelle Hurd
- Isa Briones, Evan Evagora, Santiago Cabrera
Star Trek: Picard Season 2 is available to stream on Paramount+.