Differentiating the Jedi persona

This post is a follow up to my earlier musings on the trade-off between public recognizability and authenticity. After some careful consideration, I finally made some decisions that allow me to have my cake and eat it too, while also helping to better distinguish my Jedi persona as being based in the Imperial era.

I first decided to remove the tabards from both of my tunics, replacing the narrower, floppier tabards from my summer tunic with the walnut-dyed, wider, heavier tabards from my winter (lined) tunic; the winter tunic is now left tabardless. I figure I’m less likely to do winter events, and the double layered tunic makes a nice comfy something to wear around the house in chilly weather–and the more I wear it, the sooner it develops the lived-in (non-costume) look.
If I’m doing an event where I think the audience may be expecting the ‘standard Jedi look’, I wear the summer tunic with tabards; if I do an event where I can dig deeper and play up the Dark Times, on-the-run aspect, I wear the plain tunic.

To attempt to suggest the broad-shouldered silhouette of the tabards on my plain winter tunic, I also stitched a narrow overlap on the shoulder seam from front to rear armpit (Obi-Wan’s costumes in Episodes I-III included a similar ‘tuck’ as a way of implying extra layers).

After some trial and error, I’ve also discovered that the wide obi sash is another major element that contributes significantly to the ‘Jedi aesthetic’. Simply removing the sash but retaining the plain leather belt instantly moves the outfit away from ‘Jedi’, and closer to ‘Galactic Civil War-era farmer’ both in terms of looks and timeline:

Actually, aside from the shoulder tucks, this basically becomes a beige version of Luke’s Tatooine farmboy outfit.

While going through my trunk of various non-modern clothes, I found a pair of Second World War USGI canvas gaiters/‘leggings’, which I had bought some years ago at a milsurp/gun show. Unfortunately, I didn’t inspect them as closely as I should have, and only much later discovered that I had bought a pair of Lefts. Instead of going through the hassle of tracking down a pair of Rights, I opted to use one and pair it with the more modern canvas leggings I’ve been using all along.

The style is the same but differs in the details, so it provides a subtle bit of asymmetry that is common in GFFA fashion. Even though it’s the standard greenish khaki, it doesn’t clash too much with the rest of my dark brown softgoods. Plus, it gives the whole outfit a little extra character, and suggests that I had to replace it with whatever I can find. Hey, beggars can’t be choosers, as they say, and neither can on-the-run Jedi!

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