Costume Design by: Joanna Johnston ( notable efforts: Hellraiser (1987), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Back to the Future Part III (1990), Far and Away (1992), Death Becomes Her (1992), Love Actually (2003), The Boat That Rocked (2009) )
The sequel film famous for its rather tongue-in-cheek depiction of the then-future of 2015, one of the most striking things in
Back to the Future Part II's, well, future, are of course the fashion sense of 2015 Hill Valley's denizens. Joanna Johnston's various costume designs were designed in close collaboration with the art department, especially some of the more technical costumes such as the jacket worn by Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox), which needed to have a duplicate made for a certain special effects sequence where it appears to inflate and dry itself out. The jacket was apparently made out of grey rubber (according to Johnston, this was due to Zemeckis wanting it to look like it did't need to be taken to the dry cleaners!) with orange panelling, briefly worn with pale grey trousers with similar cuffs as the jacket. The most colourful thing here however is the cap that Marty wears, being made out of an iridescent synthetic material.
Also in this film is Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), whose futuristic garb here consists of a padded red shirt, patterned with kanji (I think? I'm not sure) lettering, worn with a see-through plastic tie and a large yellowish coat.
There is also Marty's future descendants, all of which are dressed loudly - Marty's aged with wears an orange gown with thick green lining, sometimes worn with a shawl made of a synthetic material, whilst the aged Marty himself wears a plain suit distinguished by wearing a pair of twin ties of garish patterns (a common theme with the suits in this film, intended as a humorous choice - possibly a rebuttal to all the futuristic works before that had people just wearing nehru jackets). Meanwhile Marty's father wears a pair of patterned trousers, and he has a daughter (played by Michael J. Fox in drag) wearing a frilly blue shirt and large, plastic pants.
A similar twin-tied deal is sported by the local mechanic Terry (Charles Fleischer), the difference being that his ties have also been designed to be a sort of waistcoat or belt around the waist, worn with spotted trousers as well - this costunme, like a lot of the more minor characters, is sadly only seen properly in publicity photos. The other citizens costumes tend to all consist of bright colours, often pastels or shiny materials, and a lot of them tend to be rather skin-tight deals too!
There are a good deal of extras seen in the film. and again like Terry their costumes are barely seen on screen - I apologize for the crummy quality of a lot of these images, as they were taken from a pretty poor quality upload of the various behind the scenes documentaries made about the film - when I find a better quality version, I will change them. I also wish I could find any sort of behind the scenes of publicity image of
the flying taxicab driver and his costume, as he seems to be wearing some sort of yellow plastic helmet!
However, the most striking of the other future Hill Valley denizens is its local bully Griff (Thomas F. Wilson), dressed in what seems to be a black mesh vest, a ridged shiny green jacket, and black trousers fitted with a codpiece that has had the radioactivity symbol spraypainted over it - completing the look is a metallic helmet. In a way this design feels pretty much in line with what the stereotypical view of 'cyberpunk' characters dress like, even though the bulk of media involving such themes was pretty much plain clothes!
Griff is flanked by a trio of lackeys, with the most notable among their number being Spike (Darlene Vogel) who wears a black and white patterned top and black skirt, with necklaces and bracelets made out of bullet cartridges no less! The other two members, Data (Ricky Dean Logan) and Whitey (Jason Scott Lee) are dressed a bit less flash, with Data wearing an armor chestplate covered in electronic buttons whilst Whitey has metallic segments over his zip-up jacket, as well as his hair poking through his helmet.
Lastly, whilst not a 'futuristic' design but still notable enough to include here, is the shiny purple dress worn by Marty's mother in an alternate present-day timeline created due to a mishap involving a sports almanac and some lucky bets - definitely one of the most risque costumes of the film thanks to its deep collar, this feels like a sort of precursor to the dresses that Johnston would design for
Death Becomes Her a few years later!
