Galactic Style Guide – Jackets I

Welcome back to another installment of the Galactic Style Guide, the monthly series where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ to help you create a more authentic ‘outer persona’!
Folks have been asking me to do a post on in-universe jackets for a long time, so I figured the best time is Now! In fact, I dug up so many examples that this is going to be a two-parter (it feels like we haven’t had one of those in a while)! This month, we’re looking exclusively at examples from live-action sources.
For our purposes, when we say ‘jackets’ we are talking about sleeved, (typically open-front) roughly waist-length outer garments; longer garments along these lines would be considered coats (and will be discussed in a later entry!).
As we’ll see, these garments have been a big part of the GFFA style since day one:

The original film has a statistically higher number of racing-style jackets.

The jackets of our male Episode V heroes are damn near iconic!
Han’s jacket is a cotton-wool blend (Prop Store auction), while Luke’s is a wool gabardine (Alinger’s SWCOT):

Surprisingly, the only example I could find from the Prequel Trilogy was Beru (Whitesun) Lars in her pre-Aunt days. Seeing them side-by-side like this, it seems pretty clear that her Episode III costume is the same as her Episode II costume, just with the jacket/tunic dyed and worn unbelted. The other layers are all exactly the same!

*Sidebar: Can we pause for a second to appreciate how wild Biggs Darklighter’s outfit is? I was always vaguely aware of it but over the course of working on this series I’ve become minorly obsessed…I would kill for some high-rez pictures of it! It’s from such an early point in the series that there are things that don’t quite fit with what Star Wars style would become by the end of the Lucas era (a good guy wearing black AND white, the surprisingly-vibrant blue shirt, leather pants(?!), the white leather belt with pronged buckle), but together, the open racing jacket, the cape, the tall boots…they still give an iconic GFFA silhouette and really WORK together.

Finally, a couple of examples from post-Disney sources, for folks who don’t mind drawing on such things:

Okay, that should be plenty for now! In our next Style Guide installment, we will turn our attention to examples from Expanded Universe sources. Please come discuss the above – or let me know any examples I’ve overlooked or should definitely include in our upcoming post- at the SWLH facebook community! See you then!

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