Galactic Style Guide – T-shirts and tank tops

Welcome back to another installment of the Galactic Style Guide, where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ in order to help you create a more Galaxy-accurate ‘outer persona’! For this month’s installment, now that midsummer is here (for us in the Northern Hemisphere at least), I wanted to take a look at examples of T-shirts and other short-sleeved or sleeveless tops. What more can you say about them? On modern Earth these are among our most casual clothing, which puts them at odds with the galaxy’s overall space-fantasy aesthetic, but as we’ll see, they do occasionally show up in the EU as everyday clothing.

*Note that our Alderaanian spacer appears to wear his shortsleeve over a longsleeve Tshirt.
Most of the above are divergent from the standard galactic style or rare circumstances…while other characters are presumably wearing t-shirts as well, they are usually only seen worn as underlayers or in casual settings:

Clothing without sleeves, on the other hand, is somewhat more common, although we should note that the only example of such a garment in highest-tier Saga material is from the month our hero spends training on a swamp planet.

*Conehead’s garment actually appears to be a belted, sleeveless jumpsuit (?!)

However, if there is one segment of the galactic populace for whom short or no sleeves is much more common, it’s Children. While we have a smaller sample size, children in the galaxy are pretty consistently depicted with less than full-length sleeves of any style.

So: what can we take away from this? If I had to propose some rules of thumb for when t-shirts or tank tops should be visible in an adult’s ‘outer persona’, we might say this:
-during downtime aboard ship or at home
-when on holiday or in a casual setting
-when displaced from one’s home
-in a humid or wild setting where more extensive garments might be damaged by thorns, underbrush, etc.
-when freedom of movement is needed (or during physical exertion/sweating/exercise)
-when changing into or out of a flightsuit

Have I missed any examples? Please let me know in the comments, or come discuss the ins and outs of galactic commoner fashion with us at the SWLH facebook group! Until next month!

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