STV Assault Uniform: Front View With Communicator

When I left off on the story of how I got an approximation of the Captain's Assault Uniform from "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" put together, I had assembled just about everything I already had and ordered a pair of pants. But now I was left facing two extremely serious challenges: the "Wooly Pully" sweater itself, and the boots.

Although being able to decently approximate (I knew I was never going to get this thing fully show-accurate going in simply because of what little I had available to me) both components was going to be critical, it could be argued that the Wooly Pully was the key to making the entire uniform work because the sweater used in the movie itself had been heavily modified in-house to make it different from standard Wooly Pullies available for sale or used by 20th century militaries and police forces. It was, unfortunately, also the part of the uniform that was probably going to suffer the most from accuracy problems.

Color was an issue almost right off the bat. You see, this uniform wasn't always represented very well in published material. The first drawings I saw of it in the "Star Trek Encyclopedia" and the "Star Trek Omnipedia" as a child had it shown in anything from a combination of a bright green sweater and olive green pants to a full-blown olive green set, and the costume did appear to be a sort of dull green in some shots from ST:V depending on set, lighting and screen resolution conditions. Therefore, a sort of olive green shade was what I had in mind when I went looking for Wooly Pully sweaters to cannibalize for this costume project, as Wooly Pullies are now made in several colors including olive green, navy blue, gray and even black. I also had to be very careful to make sure I could get a sweater that would fit me and stretch to accommodate my movements without being too heavy, and to avoid any Wooly Pullies that had built-in shoulder boards as the ones used on screen didn't have those.

Wooly Pullies can be unusually expensive on eBay, so I was very fortunate to find one being sold secondhand for a comparatively cheap price. It was in olive green, and although there were a few inaccuracies right off the bat such as a ringed collar portion, no extra "patch" portion on the back of the shoulders and elbow patches (the most glaring inaccuracy), it was a workable base. It was shortly after this time that I also ordered the custom pants from Cosplay Sky, because I had to try to match the color of the pants to the color of the Wooly Pully after I'd gotten the jacket in hand. Unfortunately, it wasn't until after I had already bought that sweater that I was able to find a German website that had Kirk's actual Commando Uniform mounted on display under proper lighting - it turns out Kirk's uniform was actually a very deep, very dark loden-like green, almost somewhere in between green and black. I may well have done better to have gotten a navy-blue Wooly Pully instead of my olive green one! But by then it was too late, and my olive green one still had some precedent in the early illustrations, so I decided to just go ahead and use it.

Sadly, acquiring a Wooly Pully was the easy part of the process. Getting the Wooly Pully modified into an approximation of the Commando Uniform top wasn't so easy. It turns out that wool can be a pretty difficult material to work with, one that many skilled folks are actually unwilling to even touch. Almost all of the alterations and tailor shops around my immediate vicinity were Asian-run, and none of them had any intention of working on a wool sweater and pretty much shot me down flat. I was even willing to consider shipping the sweater to a company in Washington that specialized in working on wool sweaters, but even they couldn't do the job because their work was limited to repairs. I wound up being very fortunate that I happen to be one of the four administrative officers of a Facebook group dedicated to "Star Trek" cosplay, because one of the group's veteran members, a skilled costume maker and former SFMC International member with incredibly detailed knowledge about the behind-the-scenes aspects of the "Trek" franchise named Jonathan Slavin, had a special sewing machine needed to take on wool projects (a serger), was ready to take on the project and suggested that I ship the sweater to him.

Jonathan and I immediately determined a few things from looking at pictures of the sweater's original eBay listing:

1. The elbow patches were inaccurate and had to go. This was the biggest reason we needed a serger.
2. We wouldn't be able to add a rear zipper or the extra padding that went behind the shoulders.
3. It was structurally inadvisable to remove the collar even if it wasn't totally show-accurate to keep it.
4. The armband needed to be added, and it would be preferable to use olive piping instead of gold.

Because I had already started clinical rotations in the clinical laboratory at University Hospital here in Augusta, GA's medical district and the hospital's rotation hours conflicted with the hours the Georgia Health Sciences University campus mail room was open, it wasn't going to be easy for me to get the Wooly Pully to Jonathan for its transformation into my Commando Uniform top but I managed it. Jonathan himself was able to make the necessary modifications, and I finally got the sweater back - completed and ready for action - on the morning of Friday, August 9th, 2013. I still claim that I would have been totally sunk if Jonathan hadn't been willing to assist me, because I bought the sweater without realizing that almost nobody was going to want to work with it. I honestly don't know what I would have done (besides donate the Wooly Pully to a Goodwill store or clothing drive and sulk) without Jonathan's help.

There was still one other component that I had to deal with at the same time, though: the unique boots. Stay tuned!