Robert Fletcher CDG

Costume Designer Robert Fletcher was born in 1923 and grew up in Iowa until he headed to Harvard to study history and archaeology. The attacks on Pearl Harbor changed everything and he joined the Air Force, though he was mustered out due to an illness. Fletcher returned to university in Iowa to study theater, and upon graduation went to New York where he immediately got work as an actor on Broadway. He then joined fellow veterans in Cambridge to form The Brattle Theater Company, which produced 87 plays between 1947 and 1952. He worked as a producer, director, actor, and costume designer, after actress Nancy Marchard commented that he was looking at her hemline during a scene instead of her eyes. During the 1950s and 1960s he designed for ballet, opera, the early days of live television at NBC, and for Broadway where he received three Tony nominations. In the late 1960s Fletcher moved to Hollywood to design The Hollywood Palace and The Dean Martin Show, but felt he was the most creative when he was hired for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He designed the costumes for the first four Star Trek films, is responsible for the look of the Klingons and the Vulcans, and is credited as the “inventor” in the design patents of the rank pins. He has three Saturn nominations and one win. His work can be seen, of course, in the Star Trek films, but also in three productions of which he is particularly proud: North and South Book 2 (Emmy), PBS’s Taming of the Shrew, and Cyrano de Bergerac.