By Alyssa Franke
The Thirteenth Doctor’s costume had to be exceptional, while also balancing an almost impossible set of contradictions. It had to reflect the character’s history, while also letting the first woman Doctor stand out on her own. It had to be grounded in women’s fashion, while also navigating its political and practical pitfalls. It had to be a little odd and a little offbeat to be true to the Doctor, while also serving as the cornerstone of a rebranding effort that could be duplicated, packaged, and sold around the world.
Incredibly, costume designer Ray Holman and actress Jodie Whittaker’s collaboration pulled off the impossible. The Thirteenth Doctor’s costume is distinctive and unique, and yet so steeped in the show’s history that no one can quite agree just how many references to previous Doctor’s costumes might be hidden in hers. It’s a celebration of women’s fashion — but did you see that it has POCKETS? It’s bright and colorful and just a little bit mismatched. It is, in a word, brilliant.
The Doctor has always had a particular fondness for Earth. No matter where they travel across time and space, they always seem to return to our little planet at a roughly contemporary time, and usually with a human or two traveling alongside them. At a passing glance down a busy street, the Doctor could even be mistaken for being human. But if you paused to look closer, you’d notice that something’s not quite right. Perhaps it would be the droning buzz of the sonic screwdriver or the very casual conversation about visiting Queen Victoria for tea. Or perhaps it would be the stick of celery inexplicably affixed to the Doctor’s lapel.
The Doctor may be an alien, but they don’t often dress like one. Spacesuits are saved for occasions they are actually needed. And the robes and high collars of their own species, the Time Lords, were just never their style. The Doctor is far more likely to be found wearing an assortment of Earth garments, which has helped to keep the character accessible even as they’re spouting nonsense about reversing the polarity of the neutron flow.
But the Doctor’s costume has also been an essential part of demonstrating the tension between their human appearance and their alien nature. Even if the articles of clothing are human enough, there’s always something just slightly off about how the Doctor has put their outfit together. There’s a scarf that’s just too long, a style that’s just slightly out-of-date, or items that just don’t seem to go together. The Doctor’s style can essentially be described as an alien approximating humanity — throw an alien into a room filled with a random assortment of human clothing and hope for the best.
That scenario has actually happened three times on Doctor Who. The Third, Eighth, and Eleventh Doctors all stole their outfits at random from a hospital shortly after regenerating into their new body. The Eighth Doctor, after being violently killed in a shootout, literally steals a costume of the American gunslinger Wild Bill Hickok (though thanks to Paul McGann’s inescapable Britishness and gentleness, people mistakenly assume he was trying for Lord Byron). The Third Doctor, at one of his lowest points after being exiled to Earth by the Time Lords, steals the most upper-class elite outfit he can find. And the Eleventh Doctor, being portrayed by the youngest actor to ever hold the role, steals the outfit of a much older man.
Their outfits are human enough that they can pass through a crowd but just odd enough to get noticed. And yet, each look is perfectly matched for that particular Doctor.
We don’t yet know how the Thirteenth Doctor acquires her costume, but the overall look is as grounded in Earth fashion as her predecessors:
A rainbow stripe across a simple navy t-shirt. Petrol-colored culottes held up by mustard yellow suspenders. Blue striped socks peeking out of chunky leather boots. A long, hooded, light blue coat with a rainbow stripe on the lining. And one distinctive earring — two clasped hands, linked with a chain to a cuff made up of seven clustered stars.
Every piece of the costume was custom-made, but it feels like almost everything could have been found in any women’s clothing shop. The t-shirt was directly inspired by a ready-made t-shirt that Whittaker tried on, and we can already see similar designs making their way through both high-end and fast-fashion clothing stores. Forever 21 has sold several versions of an off-the-shoulder t-shirt with a rainbow stripe across the chest, and for her interview with The Times, Whittaker wore a Wyse sweater with a strikingly similar design.
The culottes are also a classic piece of women’s fashion. Women’s culottes first appeared in the Victorian era as “split” or “divided skirts.” These mimicked the look of a skirt by hiding the split with ruffles or panels while allowing women to more comfortably ride horses and bikes. In the 1930s, culottes began to be worn in the style we see today, without ruffles or panels concealing the divide. However, the style proved so controversial that when tennis player Lili de Alvarez wore a pair at Wimbledon, The Daily Mail wrote that she “should be soundly beaten.” Culottes came to be associated with mobility, independence, and those strange women: the suffragists and the athletes.
Culottes represent a blending of feminine and functional — one of the most controversial and contested areas of women’s fashion. Unlike men’s clothing, women’s clothing is almost never designed for comfort or functionality, as any woman who has ever tried to fit her cell phone in her jeans pocket could tell you.
Pockets became a bit of a cult obsession in Doctor Who fandom after Donna repeatedly berated the Doctor in “The Runaway Bride” for assuming she could carry anything at all, given that wedding dresses never have pockets. In the lead-up to the reveal of Whittaker’s new costume, women fans were asking “But will her costume have pockets?” only half-jokingly.
Holman was more than aware of this issue and has tweeted out articles examining the history of pockets in women’s fashion. Though we don’t know exactly how many pockets the Thirteenth Doctor will have, she has two large pockets clearly visible on her jacket. My own reproduction of the jacket is able to comfortably carry a cell phone, a wallet, a sonic screwdriver, a convention badge, and even a Target novel.
And then there are the shoes. Culottes are almost always paired with flats or heels, which would just frankly be unacceptable for a character like the Doctor. Doctor Who’s women fans already carry a simmering resentment towards the footwear that companions from the classic era of the show were forced to scramble around quarries in.
The scrutiny that women characters’ footwear receives has only increased in recent years — recall the outrage over Bryce Dallas Howard being forced to wear high heels as she was fleeing a dinosaur in Jurassic World. Even Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, a superhero trained for intense physical combat, is forced to wear a pair of chunky wedges. It’s an uncomfortable compromise between trying to mimic the aesthetic of heels and the reality that no warrior would ever fight in them.
Thankfully, the Thirteenth Doctor ignores the conventions of women’s fashion, opting instead for comfort and functionality. Whittaker told Entertainment Weekly her Doctor will be full of energy, and that therefore her costume “had to move with [her], rather than dictate the movement.” Therefore, she chose a pair of chunky boots that look like they’ll stand up well to chasing aliens through endless corridors.
While elements of the Doctor’s costume are grounded in women’s fashion, the overall look doesn’t scream hyper-femininity. This was a deliberate choice by Whittaker, who also told Entertainment Weekly that she was inspired by a photograph of “a woman in cropped trousers that are slightly too big, with a T-shirt, and braces, and boots.” She particularly loved “the androgyny of [the look], without it being masculine.”
The distinction she draws with non-masculine androgyny is important. Too often what designers and fashion companies present as androgynous clothing is simply drab masculine-coded clothing on feminine bodies. This reinforces the perception that masculinity and masculine-coded clothing are the neutral normal, and femininity and feminine-coded clothing is a deviation from this norm.
The Thirteenth Doctor’s outfit represents a bolder, more inclusive vision of what androgynous clothing could be. It’s unafraid to use both masculine and feminine-coded articles of clothing, to use bright colors, and to play with multiple silhouettes. The Doctor isn’t forced to throw out their braces and boots for hyper-feminine items just because they’re now a woman. But equally as important, the Doctor has the opportunity to embrace femininity in their clothing in a new and different way. And given that Whittaker is the first woman to play the role, it was especially important that the Thirteenth Doctor didn’t reject femininity as something silly or shameful.
It seems unfair to burden the Thirteenth Doctor with so much of our cultural baggage about women’s clothing. But the reality is that the Thirteenth Doctor’s costume was always going to be important for reasons that go beyond the character.
The Doctor’s outfit becomes iconic. This is going to be the outfit that women and girls will be wearing at conventions and costume parties and playgrounds for generations to come. This is the costume that little girls are going to attempt to mimic with whatever hand-me-downs they can find in their closet. And no matter where they are or what they’re doing, they’ll be wearing something designed to be fun AND functional.
And just as importantly, this is an outfit that men and boys will try on too. After all, women have been wearing the male Doctors’ costumes for years — both screen-accurate versions and versions that we’ve tweaked and made our own. Now the men can get a chance to play around with the Thirteenth Doctor’s style. They can copy it, or tweak it to make it their own, but hopefully, they’ll be able to embrace a bit more femininity in their style too.
It is incredible that the Thirteenth Doctor’s costume manages to carry our baggage so well. That it does so while looking cool, comfortable, and utterly joyful is nothing short of a triumph.
Check out this article and others like it in Issue 003 of The Sartorial Geek Magazine!
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