Staying true to the aesthetic

(I had originally scheduled this to post a few weeks from now, but since writing it the pitfalls described below keep popping up on my feed, so I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer.) After seeing more than my fair share of Star Wars costumers and their outfits online, I’ve noticed a particular trend in the last year or two across various social media platforms, mainly in the case of the Galaxy’s Edge-inspired/Batuu-bounding or OC crowd:

The desire to slap a Rebel Alliance starbird, Jedi crest, Sith symbol, Mickey Mouse, or Aurebesh letters on bloody everything seems very strong with this segment of the fandom, and the big driver of this, I think, is of course the consumer market. As a quick test, let’s do a image search for ‘Star Wars backpack’.

Results fall into two categories: Star Wars logo-branded backpacks featuring licensed images of characters, and ‘inspired by’ backpacks…and 99% of the latter will include a prominently-located starbird, Imperial cog, Jedi symbol, mythosaur skull, etc.—it’s still branding, but just think of it as ‘in-universe branding’!
The fact that this market exists at all demonstrates that the desire to look ‘in-universe’ is out there, but consumers still want to have those recognizable symbols to let people know they’re a Star Wars fan, and this desire to visually announce one’s franchise-loyalty has finally trickled down to the prop-making community over the past few years.
But the problem is this: the starbird, mythosaur, Aurebesh, etc. are incredibly rare onscreen (and the Jedi Symbol was only introduced in the early Oughts purely for the purposes of merchandizing).

To illustrate our point perfectly, we’ll take a look at this recent satchel project from JC3D’s ‘Rebel Base Room Build’ channel:

I enjoy following James’ various projects and seeing what cool stuff he’ll make next! But…while this bag looks pretty nifty at first glance….it definitely lives up to its name of ‘Star Wars-inspired cosplay bag prop‘. Foamy, artificially-weathered items like this fall into this weird gray area for me, where it seems so much effort is put on making something that ‘looks Swarzy’ from 20 feet, but up close doesn’t exactly match up with the documented material culture. And since it’s being built as a ‘cosplay prop’, this implies that form is more important than functionality; however, in our chosen pursuit, both are needed.

The maker begins by stating that he wanted to ‘replify’*—his word—this bag, which seems to mean ‘turn it into a replica’ (which I would argue is to make it much less realistic than just a simple piece of functional gear), but as an in-universe piece of kit, there’s honestly nothing wrong with the stock bag by itself, especially if we take a second and compare this to a couple onscreen examples of satchels and softpacks (to be fully covered in a later Galactic Style Guide entry):

-Luke’s backpack on Dagobah is an undecorated, blue-gray, milsurp something (I would LOVE to know more details about it)
-The satchel carried by the Baby Yoda-punching biker scout is simply a standard British P37 bag with a single Imperial-style greeble bar.
-Packs carried by the Endor strike team each have two subdued greeblies, and a hose on one side. That’s it. There’s no starbird, Aurebesh, or any of that other nonsense: we know it’s a rebel’s bag because the person carrying it is clearly a Rebel!

JC’s final bag winds up winning the grand prize by including a mythosaur, TWO starbirds, Aurebesh (‘REBEL” and “MANDO”, because of course), and a half-dozen greeblies, including an extraneous hard-drive hub attached to the upper flap.

I’m not commenting on the bluetooth speaker-‘grenades’ as those are at least something functional and similar to onscreen examples, although their inspiration (Endor troops again) are worn on a chest bandoleer instead of flopping around on the side of a pack. The giant hollow tube of foam at the top of the bag, however, serves little purpose besides being a billboard for two pieces of flair, and the space would be much better served—as in his original concept!—by a simple, functional, wool blanket-roll.

So, what can we take away from this? When it comes to ‘accessorizing’ your hard kit, it is very easy to overdo things. The Batuu-bounding crowd and social media-savvy folks like JC3D might be ‘influencers’ of the scene but that doesn’t make their output the most accurate from an in-universe perspective. For our purposes here, it remains key to use vetted sources for our references – instead of looking to fan artists who are often just working with their own idea of what ‘Swarzy’ looks like.
If research and authenticity aren’t kept at the forefront, it is “all too easy” to fall into the pit of reenactorisms, and for one’s greeblies—items which should add subtle visual interest to an object—to simply become overused Pieces Of FLAIR.

TL;DR: When it comes to detailing on props, as in the case of kitbashed ‘datapads’, less is more.

Have you noticed any other trends in the SW costuming community in recent years? I would love to hear your observations in the comments below, or in the SWLH group on facebook!

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