Galactic Style Guide – Belts of the Galaxy

Welcome to the first installment of the Galactic Style Guide, a monthly series in which I will be collecting and curating many visual examples of a single type of in-universe item. Why am I doing this, you ask? Besides having a lot of time on my hands in quarantine, too often when we think of ‘Star Wars’, we limit ourselves to thinking only of the main cast of characters, with secondary or background characters falling by the wayside. In this series, I hope to turn an analytical eye towards the incredible variety that collectively creates the larger ‘galactic aesthetic’. To my knowledge, this sort of project has never been done before, and I suspect will likely prove very useful to those of you heading (once they reopen, post-pandemic) to Disney’s Galaxy’s Edge parks, which are becoming very accommodating of GFFA-style outfits (provided they don’t stray too close to those of main characters). By shining a spotlight on previously-overlooked designs, I hope OC cosplayers and potential ‘Batuu bounders’ will see that there are many more options for Star Wars style beyond copying Han, Luke, Leia, Lando, etc.
With that out of the way, for our first installment, we’re looking at BELTS. Let’s get started!

Rectangular plates:Ben Kenobi, Shaak Ti (22 BBY); Luke Skywalker, ‘Galen Erso’; Dannik Jerriko
8s
Octagonal (rectangle buckle with corners removed): Echo Base officers, Rebel ‘fleet troopers’, Cmdr. Skywalker 3ABY (Hoth and Dagobah/Bespin), Skywalker 4ABY, Crix Madine/Rebel generals 4ABY.
Ovals
Oval plate buckles: Capt. Antilles, “Fixer” Loneozner, Gen. Dodonna, Ponda Baba, Owen Lars, Dr. Evazan, Luke Skywalker (medal ceremony).
(Note: all from 0 BBY). Ponda’s oval buckle must be for his gunbelt as he appears to have a trouser belt as well. I have also determined that Fixer’s belt and its accessory pouches were reused and worn by Owen Lars.
The costume team on The Mandalorian have given their ‘Doctor Pershing’ character an oval buckle as well.
3dots
Square buckle with three raised dots: Echo Base trooper, ‘Cassian Andor’. Note Andor’s has been paired with PLCE web belt.
fabric
Textile-based belts: Camie Loneozner, Kitster, Beru Whitesun, Wald, Shmi Skywalker. Note that all come from Tatooine: local fashion is very much hardware-free.
Ani-Roller
Anakin Skywalker 32 BBY: This looks to me like a military-type web belt buckle with plating dulled/removed; leather belt replaces webbing. By extrapolation, such a belt is appropriate for a low-class impression.
Han Solo 0 and 3 ABY: a rare example of off-the-shelf double-tongue buckles. Also gunbelt with hexagonal plate
A milsurp double-ring buckle with OD cotton webbing – possibly similar to the Vietnam-era A7A Cargo Utility Strap: Leia on Endor, Orimaarko (Pruneface commando), Gen. Calrissian, and Col. Airen Cracken. All from 4 ABY.
PLCEs
Roller-pin buckles: Bossk, ‘Cal Kestis’; Rebel X-wing pilot, Rebel hangar technician.

Note that while OT characters wear belts of ordinary nylon webbing (with ‘flare loops’ added) with this buckle, the modern era has reimagined them by pairing the buckle with the British PLCE belt (worn inside out, to show off the ridged interior for more visual interest):

SRBs
Side-release buckles: these have all been identified in previous post, except for the yellow Naboo example (Hangar Engineer), and three Sullust Rebels at lower right (EA!Battlefront)
USGIs
Pistol belts (M1936, M1956, LC-2, etc): Donovian ‘rainmen’ (x2); Bane Malar, Rebel officers, Rebel honor guard. Note that ALL of these are ‘extreme background’ characters and such belts should probably be limited due to their recognizability.
Jabbas
Three missellaneous from Jabba’s retinue 4 ABY: Taym Dren-garen, Pote Snitkin, and Vizam.  Leather belt with double-D rings, fabric sashes (textile only–Tatooine style again), and rectangular brass without tongue.

So there we go! Are there any styles I’ve missed? What would you like to see covered in the next Conventions of Style installment? (In the future, I would like to pull more examples from non-film EU sources, but such sources are often very inconsistent). Drop a comment below, or come discuss in-depth with us on facebook, where I will also be cross-posting this series!

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