Costuming a visit to the past

Part of being a costumer is nitpicking costumes on tv shows and movies. For example, don't even get me started on Braveheart.

This week we saw the premiere of two shows with unique costuming challenges -- period drama Pan Am, and the science fiction adventure Terra Nova.

Pan Am is right on the money and the costumes are just one piece of creating a beautiful picture in every frame.

Terra Nova has me curious, though. The prehistoric colony definitely does not have any sort of clothing production line, much less a fashion industry. So why do all of the characters wear fairly fashionable stuff? Is it all imported from the future? Each new group brings bales of clothes with them?

The show canon seems to indicate that the colony has been around for at least a decade. So they have to have some system for getting clothes and it seems that function would be a greater issue than style.

I really want to know what the costumer of the show is thinking and whether we'll get any answers to this in the future.