William Ware Theiss & Those SEXY, SKIMPY Women's Costumes He Designed For The Original Star Trek...

His female garment style can be summed up in the "Theiss Theory of Titillation" – self-coined and first mentioned in Stephen Whitfield's 1968 reference book, "The Making of Star Trek," p. 360 – which stated "the degree to which a costume is considered sexy is directly dependent upon how accident-prone it appears to be." Theiss was not given absolute freedom of design, however. He said that he was allowed to show an actress' breasts almost down to the nipples, but nothing on the underside of breasts. He then quipped, "Do the censors think that mold grows down there?" Not all female guest stars were fully appreciative of Theiss' sexy and daring approach to feminine costume design, as he recalled on one occasion, "When I first met Jill Ireland, she was a little uneasy about me, and I didn't find out until later it was because she had seen Sherry Jackson's skimpy costume in the episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of?," and she was afraid I was going to do something as revealing for her." (Inside Star Trek, issue 7, p. 5) Nevertheless, over the next decades, his garments attained near-legendary status, and a number of them, including some of the more titillating ones, were for the first and only time, before being auctioned off, then on public display at the 1992-1993 Star Trek Smithsonian Exhibit. Apart from his clothing designs, Theiss' other noticeable contribution to the Star Trek universe, was the Vulcan IDIC symbol that he designed for the episode "Is There in Truth No Beauty?". Theiss was perceived as a demanding and hard driving man by his staff of dressers and costumers, impressed upon by his adages such as "Stop when all work is done – and not before" and "Better rude than late". Colleague and customer Andrea Weaver noted in this regard, "Bill Theiss was a very creative designer. His designs for Star Trek were original rather than distilled from other sources, or redefinitions of previous work. This is what I appreciated about Bill Theiss. I thought he was a truly unique and rare costume creator. Others may have agreed but were more influenced by Bill's personal eccentricities and rudeness..." ~ From "Memory Alpha Fandom".