Markéta Uhlířová

Within the science fiction genre, costumes and costume-related artifice are among the most effective means though which to convey ‘futureness’. Whereas architecture provides compelling settings within which bodies move, dress and adornments attach themselves directly onto the body; they act upon it and visibly transform it. Through dress bodies not only inhabit the future but, more radically perhaps, the future also inhabits bodies.

The costumes in Ikarie XB-1 were designed by Ester Krumbachová, Jan Skalický and Vladimír Synek. Both Krumbachová and Skalický had already enjoyed a successful career in the theatre while Synek had worked in film since the 1950s. Krumbachová especially was a prolific and well-established costume designer (among her many other talents), with a decade-long career that had included prestigious collaborations with director Miroslav Macháček (who plays Marcel Bernard in Ikarie) and scenographer Josef Svoboda at Prague’s National Theatre.¹ Like the film’s set designer Jan Zázvorka, Krumbachová had already begun working on another science fiction film, Oldřich Lipský’s comedy Man from the First Century – her very first foray into film. There she parodied the kind of futurist exoticism of pre-war films like Aelita, employing asymmetrical geometric shapes, metallic fabrics and rigid plastic accessories (the film even features a futurist fashion show).

For Ikarie XB-1, Krumbachovádeveloped a softer, more restrained look that would blend into the film’s solemn ambience. The spaceship’s crew wear near-identical outfits, though these are not the prerequisite utilitarian overalls popular within earlier space operas. The costumes here are two-piece, more casual daywear than workwear and seem to be partly derived from the fashionable youth styles of the late-1950s and early-1960s. They consist of a tunic, a prominent cowl neck collar (evocative of the spacesuit silhouette) and trousers in a contrasting shade. The tunics are worn with a semi-transparent organza over-layer, which reveals a big ‘Ikarie’ logo on the back (and in women’s dress cleverly shows off the female figure while at the same time obscuring it). As a small concession to futuristic gadgets, the crew sport two pieces of wearable tech – an unspecified monitor hidden under the top layer of the tunic, and a ‘personal transmitter’, worn on the wrist like a watch.

Variations in individual garments are only minimal. The purpose of these costumes is not to demarcate the individuals but rather to emphasise their subjection to the higher purpose of a collective project. Indeed, even gender differentiations are limited only to slight alterations in cut and detail – women’s collars are made from more decorative black lurex fabric. In her ‘realistic’, ‘civilian’ approach, Krumbachova located Ikarie’s costumes not in the radical othernesss of a far-off future but, rather, in a plausible, imaginable near future.The costumes are in dialogue with fashion, although perhaps ironically, fashion was about to get ahead of fiction. In 1964 the highly structured, white-and-silver ‘Space Age’ look would be launched in Paris, instantly rendering Ikarie’s version of modern elegance too conservative.

Nowhere is the proximity between Ikarie’s costuming and fashion more apparent than in Anthony Hopkins’s 110th birthday party, where the crew suddenly transform into a soigné society. The men don identical ‘evening wear’ of dark, tapered trousers paired with white collarless jackets that evoke the austerity of modernist architecture but also the sleek minimalism of Pierre Cardin’s menswear of the 1950s. Traditional embellishments of men’s suits such as lapels, buttons and bow ties have been discarded in favour of a black criss-cross strap motif at the neckline (as seen in Cardin’s 1956 women’s collection). But the party serves above all to showcase women’s sophisticated cocktail dresses made in shimmering fabrics (which could be lamés, brocades and satins but also synthetic textiles). With cinched-in waits, partially exposed shoulders, asymmetrical draping and wide chiffon sashes and shawls, these dresses emphasise the chic femininity of the 1950s silhouette. They resemble what was seen of Mac Donald’s wife’s dress, implying that material luxuries are commonplace back on Earth.

The shooting script specifically refers only to Eva’s dress, describing it as a ‘strange evening dress, more like draped fabric’.² This abstract idea may have been taken directly from Lem who, as Polák recalled, was not prepared to entertain the filmmakers’ specific design-related queries:

… say, now they are making lurex, it’s a novelty. Do you think it would fit in? Mr. Lem didn’t know what lurex was and said he saw costume as an idea, and that he had met filmmakers like us before who had really annoyed him with such specific questions and who didn’t understand his artistic intentions. He said he sees the girl as a beautiful young creature walking through a birch park, everything is filled with fragrance, and it’s as if her dress was floating on her. And I wanted to talk lurex or dyftyn or other loathsome materialististic things, and what’s worse, I also wanted to stick something on top of it, or sew something on, and otherwise differentiate it from contemporary fashion. Shock horror!³

Just before the party, Eva comes to Brigitte’s private cabin fretting over her dress looking good. With a prominent shawl collar forming a giant bow and sash on Eva’s back, the dress has the exclusive look and feel of haute couture (something that Eva further reinforces by adopting mannequin-like gestures). Brigitte’s comment, ‘Why, you did a pretty good job on it!’, indicates that the women are themselves responsible for their own creations (though in this case, Eva’s ‘draped fabric’ would require her to possess expert seamstress skills), presumably to emphasise their nature as non-commodities.

What Polák’s recollection of his visit to Lem captures most vividly is the close attention he himself paid to recent novelties in fashion and textiles, as they would become a springboard for Ikarie’s costumes. His reflection on the process of differentiating from fashion suggests a careful consideration of how to locate Ikarie’s particular future in time. Are current fashion novelties appropriate for 200 years ahead? And what kind of statement on future fashion would a close link with current materials, styles and details effect? Utopian narratives had always been keenly aware of the perils of fashion as a supremely precise dating device, and as a result typically pictured dress as classical, timeless and ‘outside of fashion’. The popular nineteenth-century utopia Travels in Icaria (Voyage en Icarie, 1840), which may have inspired the title of Polak’s film, was no exception. Its author, the French socialist Étienne Cabet, imagines Icaria’s dress to be highly tasteful, diverse and even opulent while at the same time strictly rejecting any ‘irrational’ qualities of a capitalist fashion system, such as luxury, exclusivity or programatic change.

Fashion in socialist countries after the Second World War also made a utopian attempt to step outside of time, taking the form of a staunchly anti-fashion stance. As Konstantina Hlaváčková and Djurjda Bartlett have shown, Eastern bloc countries had during the Stalinist period rhetorically renounced Western fashion, deeming it too redolent of capitalist individualism and excess. At its crudest, the heavily ideologised socialist narrative rejected fashion’s very essence: a constant self-renewal. A system based on permanence and utilitarianism was instituted in its place, making the figure of the worker its aesthetic ideal.⁴

In the scene of Hopkins’s party, Ikarie makes a demonstrative turn towards fashion, with all its connotations of refinement and glamour. This gesture is symptomatic of the ‘thaw’ years that began in earnest after Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin in 1956, and which witnessed a gradual repositioning of Eastern fashion in relation to the West. Somewhat amusingly, in 1961 one of the script’s ‘peer reviewers’ suggested changing this scene to one of a musical concert, in order to avoid considerable expense with the sets, choreography and ‘evening extra-gowns’.⁵ Though his ‘pragmatic’ advice may have been well-meant, it missed the point entirely. The party played an essential role – to show that future utopia needn’t be unstylish, that it can uphold fashion as a necessary expression of taste, sexuality and, within given parameters, also individuality.

A clear distinction is nevertheless made between this version of high fashion and one more traditionally emblematic of the ‘excesses’ of bourgeois decadence. This is brought into focus during an inspection of a mystery derelict spaceship, the film’s only extended scene outside of Ikarie. Upon an unexpected discovery of a saucer-like craft, two of the ship’s crew are dispatched in an explorer shuttle to examine it. They enter into darkness and gradually aim their torchlights at an array of easily legible clues that point to a lifestyle of the rich and idle: a hand clutching paper money, scattered gambling dice, several dead bodies including men impeccably dressed in smart evening clothes, a posh-looking woman wrapped in a fur collar. Sure enough, it is the clothes that help date the found spaceship, if rather vaguely. As one of the explorers announces: ‘Judging by their clothes, I’d say [they come from the] twentieth [century]’, followed by: ‘Women are wearing jewellery’. Past expressions of luxury, then, are seen as anachronisms, as belonging to an outdated idea of beauty. And as the scene gradually reveals further sinister imagery, all this material paraphernalia becomes directly implicated in a politicised image of human depravity and debauchery.

¹ With a lack of accessible archival material related to the film’s production design, it is difficult to know how exactly Krumbachová worked with Skalický and Synek, and how she worked with the director (who himself admitted to having a controlling personality). In later recalling some of the production details, assistant director Hynek Bočan mentions mostly Krumbachová, singling her out as the most significant contributor to the costumes. ‘Rozhovor s Hynkem Bočanem’ in ‘Bonusové materiály’, DVD Ikarie XB-1 (Filmexport Home Video, 2011).

². Barrandov Studio a.s., archive collection: Scripts and Production Documents, Pavel Juráček and Polák, ‘Za 200 let koncem června’ (Stříbrná kometa), shooting script, January 1962: 59.

³ Cited in Jaroslav Jiran, ‘Ikarie XB1: film, který nám dal jméno’, an interview with Jindřich Polák, Ikarie magazine, no. 11, 1998: 43-4.

⁴ Djurdja Bartlett,Fashion East: The Spectre that Haunted Socialism, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2010: 99–180. Konstantina Hlaváčková, Czech Fashion, 1940-1970: Mirror of the Times, Praha, Olympia, 2000.

⁵ Šašek, ‘Odborný posudek, Stříbrná kometa’, 2/12/1961, Národní filmový archiv.


– A revised excerpt from Markéta Uhlířová, ‘Voyage through Space, Time and Utopian Modernism in Ikarie XB-1’, in: Czech Cinema Revisited: Politics, Genres, Techniques, ed. Lucie Česálková, National Film Archive, Prague, 2017
Full version: https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/podzim2017/FAV320/um/Voyage_through_Space_Time_and_Utopian_Mo.pdf