Out of This World Designs
After making sci-fi space travel look realistic on TV, costume designer Esther Marquis designs outfits for actual astronauts
Photos by Patrick Strattner
Out of This World Designs
Esther Marquis makes sci-fi space travel look realistic on TV—and also designs outfits for actual astronauts
In the opening sequence of For All Mankind’s fourth season on Apple TV+, a Russian cosmonaut glides through space. He’s monitored by a crew from Helios Aerospace, a private space exploration company, and mission control rooms in Houston and Star City, Russia. A boxy backpack holds his life-support systems. He gazes through his helmet’s panoramic visor at his destination, an asteroid the crew hopes to mine. Then, he reaches out and drags a thickly gloved hand across the rocky surface, kicking up a puff of black dust. If not for the impeccable cinematography and dramatic music, a viewer just might believe they were watching the first human land on an asteroid.
The primary conceit of the science fiction drama For All Mankind is that Russia beat the US to the moon in 1969, triggering what Paste magazine has called “sprawling sociopolitical butterfly effects.” Al Gore defeats George H.W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election. Before that, a gay, Republican woman and ex-astronaut is president. John Lennon is alive. Michael Jordan eventually chooses baseball over basketball. In this timeline, space exploration surges, leading to colonies on the moon and Mars, private space travel, and US-Russian collaboration.
The show is sci-fi and historical fiction at the same time, an ambitious piece of storytelling that spans decades. “The biggest challenge is not sending people to Mars but making them look believable once they arrive,” New York Times critic Alexis Soloski wrote about the show. The person responsible for those looks—from the cosmonaut’s space suit to a NASA engineer’s tweed blazer—is costume designer Esther Marquis.
Marquis (’91,’92) began her career as a costume designer in theater. Then she spent several years as a film and television textile artist, the person responsible for aging and dyeing clothing to make it look realistic. Her credits include the Denis Villeneuve–directed drama Prisoners and the Marvel superhero film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Accepting a role as a costume design assistant on season 3 of For All Mankind was a conscious decision to get back into design. When the head designer left in the middle of that season, Marquis was promoted to lead the department.
To prepare for season 4, Marquis says she was involved in more than 500 costume fittings with actors, and each fitting involved multiple costumes. And if that wasn’t a big enough challenge, she had to design the most complicated piece of her career: a new space suit.
Masha Mashkova and Joel Kinnaman in season 4 of For All Mankind. Mike Yarish/Apple TV+
Rewriting History
Each season of For All Mankind leaps into a new decade. The show’s first four seasons have spanned more than 30 years. What that means is a careful reimagining of creative details, across every department of the production, from set construction to makeup to costumes.
Several characters from season 1, which takes place mostly in the early 1970s, are still around for season 4, set in 2003. Ed Baldwin, played by Joel Kinnaman, is a hotshot astronaut when the show begins. In the latest season, he’s a grizzled grandfather who has put on a few pounds.
Watch the trailer for season 1 of For All Mankind. Apple TV+
“We’re thinking about where he’s come from, what he’s been up to, and where he’s going,” Marquis says. Baldwin’s style goes from beige plaid button-up, to a Members Only–style jacket, to a microfiber vest. When we meet him in season 4—which focuses on themes of socioeconomic tensions between factions in a Mars settlement—he’s in a fleece button-up uniform that contrasts with the drab work clothes of the base’s laboring class.
Marquis and her team, which grows to about 40 people during their busiest times, track each character and discuss how their personal styles would’ve evolved over the course of the show’s storyline. “It’s a really comprehensive look at character development. You begin to ask yourself very interesting questions about their physicality and their mental state,” she says.
“I want to be part of that evolution as much as the actor is. I’m a caretaker of that character.”
Marquis (left) sketched this design at right for the season 4 space suit.
Fashion vs Function
Garrett Reisman, a former NASA astronaut, has been an advisor on the show since the beginning. “My job is trying to make it as technically accurate as possible,” he says. “The great thing about this production is that they really care.” Not all of the projects he’s advised have paid attention to the details, he says—a point that his astronautical engineering students at the University of Southern California sometimes raise in class.
The first three seasons of For All Mankind were focused on reaching and exploring the moon. That meant costume designers could rely on historical examples of space suits used for the same purposes. But for season 4, which opens on Mars, that wasn’t possible. So it was up to Marquis to design a suit that was both futuristic and retro, technologically believable and aesthetically pleasing.
Joel Kinnaman and Tyner Rushing (left), and Krys Marshall (right) in season 4 of For All Mankind, set on Mars. Apple TV+
A space suit is complex. NASA describes it as a “miniature spaceship shaped like the human body.” That ship is constructed with up to 16 layers, each with a specific function, like heating, cooling, rip prevention, and waterproofing. Space suits must carry water, oxygen, filters, and a communication system. And they can keep astronauts alive in temperatures from -250 to 250 degrees Fahrenheit.
Marquis didn’t have to create a fully functional space suit, but it had to look realistic and be comfortable enough for the actors to perform in it. One actor suffers from claustrophobia, she says, making an already complex assignment even tougher.
For inspiration, Marquis studied historical and fictional space suits. She found the real space suits to be the most helpful. “History is a wonderful kind of anchor,” she says. “It’s like, ‘OK—this is my starting point. Where do we want to go from here?’”
As Marquis sketched early drafts, she shared them with Reisman. The two bounced ideas back and forth as she refined her design. “My concern was making them as technically accurate as possible,” Reisman says. “For example, you need a cooling system—and that has to be different for Mars than it is in space. She was great—she was very hungry for the technical stuff.”
The process took five months. Marquis’ design had to be rendered by a 3-D artist so a special effects studio could fabricate the final suits. And in an unexpected way, her sci-fi suit also opened a door into real-world space exploration.
Left: Axiom Space, a real-life space exploration company, asked Marquis to design an outer layer for its (AxEMU) space suit. Right: Marquis also designed flight suits for their Ax-3 Mission. Michael Lopez-Alegria/Axiom Space
From Fiction to Fact
During production of season 4, a representative from Axiom Space, a space exploration company based in Houston, Tex., reached out to Reisman. The company needed help designing a new space suit and they knew Reisman had Hollywood connections. “They were going to reveal it to the public and they were really concerned with the aesthetics,” he says. “I said, ‘Oh! I’ve got just the person for you.’” He gave them Marquis’ name.
Why did a company capable of sending people to space need the help of a Hollywood costume designer? Inspiration. “Aesthetics offers an opportunity to connect with people on a challenging feat like human spaceflight,” says John Hunt, Axiom Space’s vice president, deputy program manager of extravehicular activity. “[It] captures the imagination of the public.”
Marquis’ first project for Axiom was designing an outer layer for their Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) space suit. Her cover would hide proprietary technology and improve the appearance of the suit during promotional appearances, although it wouldn’t be used in space. She came up with a sporty black-and-red design.
Though the AxEMU suit is still going through NASA testing, one crew member has worn it in space: Gigi, a teddy bear used to indicate when astronauts have reached a zero-gravity environment.
After unveiling their AxEMU, Axiom Space hired Marquis to adapt her design to flight suits (worn by astronauts inside a spacecraft) for their Ax-3 Mission crew, which spent 18 days on the International Space Station (ISS) in January and February 2024. Seeing the Axiom crew on the ISS, clad in her design, “was one of the highlights of my life,” Marquis says.
This career pivot into space travel was unexpected, but she is embracing the work—and the novelty of it. “Our profession is not just about designing costumes for theater or TV and film. It can reach out farther afield.” She’s tight-lipped about season 5 of For All Mankind, due out in 2025, but she offers one promise: “It’s going to be our biggest season yet. There are some lovely challenges.”
